# Letters from the Old World/Number 4

This letter is a continuation of the previous.
CITY OF LONDON, February—, 1862.
In my last I described the rooms number one and two at Madame Toussand; let us now pass into the third room, called most appropriately the chamber of horrors. Here are collected busts and figures, moulded in wax, of many of those noted criminals, whose horrible crimes have caused the blood to run chill. As we enter is a man low of stature, with an open eye, slender and delicate expression, light hair and whiskers, with nothing apparently to distinguish him from a crow of men who in the middle paths of life daily pass us in the streets, and yet the lowered brown, the tiger like eye, shows a man than whom the history of crime has recorded none more blood thirsty. This wretch many will remember when I mention William Palmer. Passing by other less notorious criminals we come to Orsini, who was beheaded some few years since for attempting the life of Napoleon III. His countenance is frank and noble, his eye clear and piercing. He probably was influenced to the attempt by conscience, which, however perverted, seems to have guided his life. At his side is Pierre, his companion in the attempt; he perished on the same scaffold. Here also is the figure of the notorious murderer of Henry IV, Ravaillac. In the center of the room, under a glass case, we see the head of the monster Murat, who was killed by Charlotte Corday while in the bath, and recording the name of men who were obnoxious to the power then existing.— The wound was almost immediately fatal; and he is represented as clutching with feeble, nervous grasp, at the stiletto buried in his throat. Nena Sahib sits in gloomy splendor at the foot of the room represented at the time of giving the order for the massacre of women and children at Cawnpore.
Leaving the criminals, we pass under an archway into a recess, where are some relics of the innocent and persecuted. In a dark chamber, dimly lighted by a small jet of gas, made to represent a taper, sits at his devotions, a man who for thirty long years languished in this dungeon—the exact counterpart of the original of the Bastile. With his Bible and a few mice, his only companions, he lived through those long dreary years. When released, he had so lost all recollections of life as to wish to be again immured in his dungeon; he was accordingly led back to his cell. Near this is the identical guillotine by which perished nearly three thousand victims of the first French revolution; among whom were Louis XIV and Marie Antoinette, Madame Roland, and Charlotte Corday. An hour could give us but a faint idea of the wonders of Madame Toussand’s collection, which was commenced over one hundred years ago. Madame herself died some twenty years ago—being then over ninety years of age. Her sons succeeded her; only one of whom now carries on the business. He is very wealthy, and makes his exhibition his hobby. The French government has offered him fabulous sums for the relics of their great Emperor; but he will not part with any of them. Although his hobby, I am told it is very remunerative. I have described to you but few of the objects of interest in this great city. When we return, as we expect to in August, I will have something more to say about its other wonders. We leave by the evening train for Southampton. I will try to add a line from either there or Havre.