Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 December 1879 — “Monsieur De Belin.” [ARTICLE]

“Monsieur De Belin.”

In theKleinerJoacp*], a doily newspaper recently started in Berlin by the Prussian railway king. Dr. Strousberg, is published ate Interview recently granted to the writer by Krauts, the State executioner, * who beheaded Hoedel last summer. While ‘‘Monsieur de Berlin” was cnatting pleasantly with his Visitor about the decapitation of the would-be-regicide— Kraut’s first performance as a headsman—a knock woe heard at the door and a footman in splendid livery entered the room with a request that the Scharfrtehler would be pleased to speak with him for a moment in the passage. Krauts went ont with the lackey, and after a brief interchange of sentences in an undertone was heard to say aloud, ‘‘Tell Her Excellency the Lady Countess that I am very sorry; butl cannot,dare not. do it!” Interrogated upon his return by his visitor with respect to the mission of the mysterious man-servant, he replied with a smile, ‘‘Ohl it was only a request from one of my ‘sympathizers,’ such as reach me several times a week. You may often see the handsomest equipages in Berlin standing at the corner of Mulackstrasse. They bring me lady visitors, young aad old, pretty and ugly. Yes, yes; many ladies or our highest aristocracy have called upon, me and have insisted upon seeing my wife when I was not at home.”

“And what did these ladies want?” “The merest rubbish! Hair cuttings of criminals, for instance —a bloodstained pocket-handkerchief, a morsel of bread from the headsman’s break-fast-table. or one of my gloves.” Krauts himself is a fine young fellow, decorated with the Iron Cross for valor in the field. Like most subordinate functionaries in Prussia, he was a noncommissioned officer in the army, and received his present appointment upon his discharge as a reward for faithful and gallant service. He is maariedand the proud father of a fine little boy, the neir apparent to his important office. With a touch of quaint piety, be introduced this lad to his visitor’s notice as “his successor, please God,” and observed that though he had passed an uneasy night before the morning fixed for Hoedel’s execution, when he looked into his “client’s” impudent, sneering face, he “thanked God for making his business ss easy to him.”