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84 VIOLENCE AND THE LABOR MOVEMENT
public a last appeal in favor of the condemned." (10)
It has long been the custom in France not to punish an
abortive crime with the death penalty, and it was generally
believed that Vaillant's sentence would be changed
to life imprisonment. President Carnot, however, refused
to extend any mercy, and Vaillant was guillotined.
A few days after the execution of Vaillant, a bomb
was thrown among some guests who were quietly assembled,
listening to the music, in the cafe of the Hotel Terminus.
Several persons were severely wounded. After
a fierce struggle with the police, Smile Henry was arrested.
In the trial it was learned that he had been responsible
for a number of other explosions that had taken
place in the two or three years previous. He had attempted
to avenge the miners who had been on strike at
Carmaux by blowing up the manager of the company.
He had deposited the bomb in the office of the company,
where it was discovered by the porter. It was brought
to the police, where it
exploded, killing the secretary and
three of his agents. Henry was a silent, lonely man,
wholly unknown to the police. Mystical, sentimental,
and brooding, he believed that the rich were individually
responsible for misery and social wrong. "I had been
told that life was easy and with abundant opportunity
for all intellects and all energies," he declared at his trial,
"but experience has shown me that only the cynics and
the servile can make a place
for themselves at the banquet.
I had been told that social institutions were based
on justice and equality, and I have seen about me only
lies and deceit. Each day robbed me of an illusion.
Everywhere I went I was witness of the same sorrows
about us, of the same joys about others. Therefore I
was not long in understanding that the words which I
had been taught to reverence— honor, devotion, duty
—