IN
ates, in a cabaret, when a quarrel arose,
on which he drew his knife, and slightly
wounded his antagonist; for this he was
sentenced by the magistrates to three
months’ imprisonment. He stated to his
master, who was one of the magistrates,
that as it was then summer-time, and he
could gain more money by his labour than
in winter, it would be particularly cruel to
confine him, as he had an aged mother
who lived with him, and depended on him
for her su p p o rt; he said he had no objection
to submitting to the punishment in the
winter, and would deliver himself up on
any appointed day. His master, who knew
him to be an honest man, prevailed with
the other magistrates to postpone his punishment
till winter. On the day fixed, he
delivered himself up to the keeper of the
prison, and remained there the full time
of his sentence. It is the practice in Geneva,
to confine the prisoners on certain
days in the month, in dark and solitary cells,
that imprisonment may be felt as a real
punishment. It happened that the cell in
which he was occasionally confined, was
the one which had recently been occupied
by two murderers before their execution ;
this circumstance is supposed to have
troubled his imagination, and was probably
considered by him as a disgrace, he had
not expected to suffer. When the time of
confinement was expired, he returned to
his mother, where he had the additional
mortification to learn, that during his absence,
his favourite nymph, Fanchette, had
transferred her affections to another. His
honour and his love were both wounded;
he could not survive the shock, but procured
a pistol, and blew out his brains.
On my return to England, I saw that
Dr. Moore, in his Letters from Switzerland,
has noticed the frequency of suicides at
Geneva, but without attempting to assign
any specific cause.
There is a certain class of reasoners, who
are ready to attribute every instance of
moral depravity in countries once united to
France, to the influence of French principles
; and as suicides are common at Paris,
even among the lower classes, such persons
would falsely have maintained, that the
practice of self-destruction had been introduced
into Geneva by the French, had we
not the testimony of Dr. Moore, that it
was equally prevalent forty years ago.
H 2