The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1900-08-06
AHAUNTED HEADSMAN.
No Peace For Diebler, the Paris Ex-
ecutioner.

No Peace For Diebler, the Paris Ex-
ecutioner.
I paris correspondent New York World)
The news that old Deibler had at
tempted suicide startled Paris.
Deibler is the man who for thirty
five years guilIetined the criminals
that France sentenced to death. No
man enjoys a more universal reputa-
ton.
After cutting off some 100 heads,
Deibler. driven by remorse, has at
tempted To cut his own throat But the
razor was blunt, or his hand feeble; the
cash does not endanger his life he
SWearS, however, that he VIII Try
again as soon as he can fool the watch
now placed over him.
The event took place about two
weeks ago. but until yesterday the
family had succeeded in preventing
any leakage of information Then
servant spoke.
Two years ago DeibIer retired, and
his son, who had long been his chief
assistant. succeeded him. The old man
had reached the ripe age of rs; he had
acquired plenty of money, and he de-
cided that he had worked long enough
And SO, in a pleasant villa on the
outskirts of Paris, like unto an honest
merchant WHO HdQ DIOSpSIGu anu
finally passes the business to younger
hands, DeibIer settled down TO a quiet
enjoyment of his well-earned repose-
But now a strange thing took place
The hardened cynic who forced down
into the death collar so many unwilling
neckS, the man who could fight with
unwilling, wriggling bodies, bend them
under the knife, watch their lives
squirt out with their blood, and sleep a
i Ice 81, ,-rrI,4 I.N
man is haunted by horrible visions of
his past.
The specters of his victims has risen;
by night and by day they keep him
company. They have poisoned his
waking hours and filed his sleep with
indescrible terrOrs. They have made
the old 'bOurreaU' Cheadsman) howl
to God for mercy.
In vain.
In vain. for he says that the CHASTITY
sight and sounds of long forgotten
tragedies haunt him more and more
persistently, and that he would rather
die
Some people reading the accounts
about these things which are published
| here Simply say: "Deibler has gone
crazy, and no wonder. A man who
would see ghosts with less excuse than
! his past charged with human agOnieS.
I mutilatiOns and blood. Deibler is in
sane"
After a conversation which he had
with DeibIer today the correspondent
| does not think so.
The retired eXecutiOner does not
asCribe his mental torture to the pres
ence of ghosts lowering about him. He
is a man of keen intelligence and no
superstitutiOn at all He reasons his
trouble with remarkable luCidiJy, and
somewhat in these words.
For some reason, perhaps because of
my age or Of my present idleness, my
| memory has grown to be the one facul-
ty in which all my brain power con
centraJeS.
4 used to remember the past, but as
we all dO-vaguely, without any feeling
| that it was being re-enacted again. And
| these remembrance were mixed with
! interest taken in the present, and in
the future, they did not harry me
But now, despite all my effort TO
turn my mind 10 other things, it is the
past that ObtrUdes itself always. And
Of the past. only those CHASTITY bits that
would be Nightmares to any one. l de-
clare l can't stand 1t. | simply can't.
Nobody can form any conception Of
the vividness, of the acuteness of every
detail. Il is as if l saw il all again
there before my eyes The squirting
blood, the freshly cut muscles of necks.
My God,
You remember how Carrara fought
when We took him up to the guillOtine.
He fought, ne begged and whined; he
was nightly unwilling TO die. Well at
night | can hear his voice in my mem
DRY, with just the same intOnatiOnS as
rang then-ah. that awful clamOr of
strong man who is dragged and carried
to the knife against his fierce resist
1nT-EPE hear
clamOr that filled the air that morning
before dawn.
of course. | have said to myself
time and again that ii was all nom
sense; that 1 ought to think of the
flowers and the sunlight. and Of my
pretty daughter who loves me, and that
these creatures hES murdered and had
deserved their fate.
But if l sit here and look at the
garden my mind suddenly remembers
Marie Chanut, the ugly she-devil that
we executed in AlgierS fifteen-eighteen
years ago. 1 hear her cuTsing me and
my race And just as plain as if it was
all being done over this minute | hear
the knife swish through the flesh and
the sound Of the head falling IN the
SaWdust.
call it nonsense If you viii. I say
it's a disease, this too graphic memory.
some accidents perhaps. Some OF those
awful things that happen in the street
and make the byStanderS sick and
faint-a child crushed by a street car
that grinds the little being to jelly be-
fore your eyes, for example. For some
days you feel i'll every time YOU think
of 1t. Do you nOt2 But you forget:
your mind does not always recall the
CHASTITY picture. the unearthly cry Of
2 h.
you find any pleasure in living2
We'll. ] have in my life nearly 200 such
tragedies. and when my old head has ex-
haUSted the horror of one another comes.
Another more harrowingl
And my sleep. my sleepi To some peo-
pie sleep Is ObliteIatiOn, rest. Mine is
peOpled with these thingS-seVered heads
Winking their last nervous WInkS to me
from the basket where I have Just sent
them rolling, and those headless bodies
have you ever seen the headless body of a
man move. jump and tumble about like
a decapitated chicken? The stump of
neck is Quivering flesh. and the blood
spurts out from the arteries Some OF
these streams 90 far. as from a pinhOle in
a watering hose; others just thTOb out
little and fall short. and the aggregate
make a crimson food that runs on the
platform abundantly, like liquid from an
upset bucket. arrhi'
The physicians who have been called in
TO take care Of Deibler think his Self-in-
But 1ley are concerned over the physical
effects that this brOoding may have.
One of these dOctOrs-a man of great
reputatiOn-dOeS not hesitate TO pronounce
that the old eXecutiOnerS Authorizations
are q form of monOmania. Another physi-
cian-the specialist who was called upon
to succeed DR.. CharcOt at the Salpetriere
having been told the symptoms by the
World correspondent. said similar cases
of a ''fiendish memory had been OBJ
served.
This is not a new disease" said the
learned man. Pascal once saw a man
come down a steep precipice and dash his
brains at his feet on the rocks He kept
--.nIrlcr rhor Iarrihla f. n the los 1T niE