* Avis Everhard would have had to live for many generations
ere she could have seen the clearing up of this particular
mystery. A little less than a hundred years ago, and a
little more than six hundred years after the death, the
confession of Pervaise was discovered in the secret archives
of the Vatican. It is perhaps well to tell a little
something about this obscure document, which, in the main,
is of interest to the historian only.

Pervaise was an American, of French descent, who in 1913
A.D., was lying in the Tombs Prison, New York City, awaiting
trial for murder. From his confession we learn that he was
not a criminal. He was warm-blooded, passionate, emotional.
In an insane fit of jealousy he killed his wife--a very
common act in those times. Pervaise was mastered by the fear
of death, all of which is recounted at length in his
confession. To escape death he would have done anything,
and the police agents prepared him by assuring him that he
could not possibly escape conviction of murder in the first
degree when his trial came off. In those days, murder in
the first degree was a capital offense. The guilty man or
woman was placed in a specially constructed death-chair,
and, under the supervision of competent physicians, was
destroyed by a current of electricity. This was called
electrocution, and it was very popular during that period.
Anaesthesia, as a mode of compulsory death, was not
introduced until later.

This man, good at heart but with a ferocious animalism close