The star. (Reynoldsville, Pa.) 1892-1946, 1905-03-15
KINGOFTHEGUIL
UNIQUE POSITION OF FRANCES
PUBLIC ExEcUTIoNER.

Government Functionary With High
Sounding Title-sinister Office Often
Descends From Father to Son
Louis Deibler's Wife Daughter of an
Executioner.
One of the best known Parisians OF
modern times has just passed away;
yet there were not SO men in all
France who were willing to know
him.
He was peculiarly popular, in con-
temptuous way, among the lower class
es, says Pearsons Magazine; yet no
one workingman in ten thousand
would shake his hand.
He had unique position, alone OF
his kind. Though neither statesman,
man of law, administrator or soldier,
he was a government functionary with
the most high sounding Of titles; yet
this title was unknown to the great
mass of Frenchmen, who called him
by another name-whlch was not his.
They called him Monsieur de Pa
ris." His real title was executor des
hautes oeuvres Che who executes high
deeds). His name was Louis Antoine
Stanislaus Deibler, and his profession
was the cutting Off of heads.
He was the sole public executioner
of France and Corsica. His father had
been public executioner before him.
And his son succeeds him in the sim
lister office.
The father of Louis Deibler was pub
lie executioner at Rennes and in the
five departments of Brittany. The
stain was already in the family, and
SO was familiarity with the vocation.
What could the young man have
done in life? Should he make himself
lawyer, a painter, or go into busi-
ness, the stain would have followed
him. He was the son of the guillotine,
and there was not girl in France
that would have married him!
In France it is not as with us.
where these dread responsibilities are
diluted by division among thousand
sheriffs, each occupying for few
years only an Office that Is highly hon.
orable, and in which the execution
of high deeds" If it comes at all, is
the rarest of accidents and leaves no
personal association in the public
mind.
1t has always been different In
France. Under the old regime OF
kings, as far back as the 18th century,
we find individuals whose life work
1t was to whip, brand, hang, behead,
break on the wheel and burn" in the
| name of the law. The title was that
Of executor of high justice" a pro-
fession that demands long apprentice
ship, because, according to an ancient
ordinance, the bourreau execution
err must know how to do his office
by means of fire, by the sword, the
whip, the wheel by drawing and
quartering, by the fork, by dragging,
pointing and pricking, by ear cutting,
by dismembering, by fustigating, by
the pillory, by the iron collar, and by
other like pains according to the Gus
toms and usages of the land ordered
by the law for the terrifying of male
factors"
In 1920 the bourreau of Paris had a
fixed salary Of 10000 livres, equivalent
today to $4,000, for himself and his
| aids. The guillotine was not yet in
vented, though the practice Of tortur-
ing had almost died out and the chief
work of Monsieur de Paris was the
merciful cutting off Of heads by means
Of the axe and block. In those days
it was always Monsieur de Paris, y
Monsieur de Rennes," and so on-a
strange title strangely shared by bislr-
ops. Thus the great Bossuet was
known to the court Of Louis XIV as
Monsieur de Meaux."
1t was natural that the i'll famed
though highly paid Office should run in
families. A single family-the fam
Gus Sansons-occupied it through
generations, from the year 1858 down
to 1S47, from the old days of torture
to the merciful invention of the gull
lotine, through the merciful red waves
of the Revolution, the Empire, and the
Restoration of kings down to the very
eve of the Second Republic. Genera
| ton after generation the Samson fam
| lily kept its memoirs; and their pub
| lication a few years ago, in eight
large volumes, though scarcely more
than publishers venture, with few
| important contributions to history,
make strange reading.
Louis Antoine Stanislaus Deibler,
who was born in the year 1873, had
discovered early in life that his father
was not like other men-he was Mon
sieur de Rennes." A few years ago,
in a moment of mournful remini-
scence, he pictured to friend his
young wife's solicitude when his own
little son began to ask questions.
Papa is travelling" the child would
prattle. The boy grew. Then one day
he said Papa is traveling!" in a
tone she had never heard from him
before.
And she knew that he knew!
| have said that there was not q
| girl in all France who would have
married Louis Deibler. There was
one in Algiers, however, who received