The History and Romance of Crime 15
Crimes of the character indicated above are numerous enough in the
criminal annals of France, but they by no means constitute the whole of
her calendar of crime; and in the next chapter we pass on to others not
less fearsome.
CHAPTER VI
CELEBRATED CASES
Parricide--Benoit and his mother--Donon Cadot--Combinations
for crime--Soufflard and Le Sage--The mysterious case of
Madame Lafarge--A strange story--The Duc de Choiseul-Praslin
kills his wife in the faubourg St. Honoré--Evidence clearly
against him--Poisons himself and escapes justice--Suspected
in Paris that special favor was shown him on account of his
rank--Failure of justice in this case one of the supposed
causes of the French Revolution of 1848.
The crime of parricide was so little conceivable in ancient law that no
mention of it appears in the early codes. Six centuries of civilisation
elapsed before the Roman law-makers devised a special penalty for
the child who slew his parent. The guilty offspring was sewn up in a
leather sack, and drowned in the sea; in this it was the custom later
to enclose a dog, a cock, a viper and a monkey. The case of Benoit,
quoted below, was by no means isolated. At the trial of Edward Donon
Cadot in 1844, the public prosecutor admitted that there had been
ninety-five parricides in France in the course of ten years. Only a
short time before had the special penalty inflicted in addition to
death, that of mutilation by striking off the offending hand, been
suppressed.
The causes that have inspired this horrible offence are in all cases
generally the same; either the impatient heirs, weary of waiting for
their inheritance, have hastened the departure of the obstacle, or they
have resented the duties imposed on them by the prolonged existence
of an aged and useless parent. These reasons have too often weighed
in France, especially with the peasant class, at once avaricious and
greedy, and the most hideous stories of the savage cruelty of children
towards their parents are to be found in French criminal records; and
this even in quite recent times.
A singularly savage instance of matricide is on record; that of
Frederick Benoit, who murdered his mother at Vouziers, in 1832, and
committed a certain murder at Versailles, for which he suffered death
in Paris. This Benoit was the third son of the Justice of the Peace
at Vouziers. The father was in the habit of visiting a mill he owned
at some little distance, and passing the night there. Madame Benoit,
when left alone, was always a prey to apprehension, for they kept a
considerable sum in cash in the wardrobe, near her bedroom. This fact
was known to young Benoit. One night, when the judge was absent, an
alarm of robbers was raised, and several neighbors rushed in. Frederick
met them on the threshold with the news that the thieves had escaped
by the window, but he begged some one to rouse his mother at once. On
entering her room she was found lying dead upon her bed, with her
throat cut from ear to ear. Death must have been instantaneous, but her
head was enveloped in a woollen petticoat, undoubtedly to stifle her
cries.
Circumstance did not support the theory that thieves had broken into
the house. All the windows had been securely closed at bedtime. The
shutters could be opened only from within. Besides there were no signs
of muddy footmarks brought in from outside, where it was raining hard.
Nor, last of all, was the existence of the money in the cupboard, 6,000
francs in gold, known to any one outside the family circle. The inquiry
seemed naturally limited, therefore, to the persons actually occupying
the house that night,--Frederick Benoit and a young girl, a cousin,
who served as domestic. As the boy was barely twenty and the girl not
seventeen, the police could not bring themselves to suspect them.
Several arrests were made, but guilt could not be fixed upon any one.
Then all at once the second murder was committed by Benoit, who killed
a youthful companion, with whom he was on the most intimate terms. They
had occupied a room together in a small hotel at Versailles. At midday
Benoit had gone out, but no sign was made by the other. In the evening,
about 7 o’clock, the servants went up and found the door locked from
the outside. They entered by another door, and discovered the body of
the second young man with his throat cut. “Precisely as my mother was
killed,” remarked Benoit, when subsequently arrested, and brought into
the presence of the body at the Morgue.
Witnesses now appeared, who had heard the deceased declare that
his life was in danger from Frederick Benoit. “I know what he has
done, and he will certainly kill me some day to save his own skin.”
Benoit was accordingly arrested. A search in his lodgings in Paris
revealed a razor case, from which the razor had been removed, and a
quantity of gold inserted, wrapped up as _rouleaux_ in fragments of
the _Constitutionnel_ newspaper, to which his father, the judge, was
a subscriber. Further incriminating evidence now came from the last
confession of the girl Louise Feucher, his cousin, to the effect that
she had been his accomplice in the murder of Madame Benoit. She had
fled from the house in Vouziers to Paris, and fallen into bad ways,
which had led to her imprisonment in Les Magdelonnettes, where she
entered the hospital, and died.
Frederick Benoit was duly convicted, sentenced to death and executed.
It came out in the course of the trial that his mother had had a
strong presentiment of impending evil. On the night of the murder,
when her husband was absent, she carefully inspected the house with
her son, the intending parricide, and made all secure. “The nights
are long (it was the month of November); we never know what might
happen,” she said, closing all doors and shutters, and looking to the
locks and fastenings. She could not protect herself from the danger
already within the house. Her murderer was in a room close by, and he
accomplished his purpose with a single blow, while she still slept, and
passed, without a struggle, instantaneously from life to death.
M. Donon Cadot, a prosperous banker of Pontoise, was found murdered in
his offices on January 15, 1844; and suspicion fell upon his second
son, who lived with him. He was a widower. His household was limited to
one general servant, and his economy was so rigid that he passed for
a miser. No doubt he was very illiberal to his son. On the day named,
one for the settlement of bills and notes of hand, the banker was at
his desk by 9 o’clock, ready to meet his engagements, and transacted
business for a time, but at the half hour the doors were found closed,
and the son, answering for his father, declared that he had been called
away for a time. He had not returned by four in the afternoon, and the
son on the premises, Edward, summoned an elder brother, who lived in
the town, to attend to the business of the bank. Together they found
a sluggish stream of mingled blood and ink, flowing under the office
door. Forcing it they discovered the lifeless corpse of their father
within. He had been battered to death by some heavy instrument.
The motive of the crime was revealed by the forced safe and empty
drawers of the desk. Everything of value, bills, bank-notes, cash
and a quantity of plate had been carried off. The first named, many
hundred in number, and amounting in all to some 300,000 francs, being
unnegotiable, were returned by post. Other bills, however, were
presented, and the bearer of one of them was traced to his home, where
a number of the papers were found in the same handwriting as the
envelopes which had come through the post. This fixed the suspicion
on a man named Rousselot, and he was brought to confess that he had
participated in the crime. He had committed it at the instigation of
the son Edward, who was moved by greed and jealousy. A long trial
followed, resulting in the conviction of Rousselot and a sentence of
life at the galleys, but the evidence was not deemed conclusive against
the son, and he was released.
A common feature in French crime has always been the systematic
organisation of offenders in bands, where a number of them contrive
to act in concert under chosen leaders. There have been many of these
associations from time to time working on a wide scale and doing
enormous damage. The _chauffeurs_, so called from their methods of
torture to extort confessions of hidden wealth, were a product of
the revolutionary epoch, and a revival of the baneful bands, that
have constantly ravaged France from the Middle Ages. The extensive
operations of Cartouche, one of the most daring and successful of
thieves on a large scale, were rivalled by the terrible band directed
by Hulin in the forest of Montargis, and the exploits of Pontailler,
who worked close up to the walls of Paris.
The depredations of a number of the worst criminals spread terror
through the capital in 1836 and the years immediately following. Now
again, as when Vidocq was charged with pursuit and discovery, serious
robberies were of constant occurrence, and were rightly attributed to
associated action. Very many ex-convicts, those regularly released,
and yet more who had made their escape from durance, were at large.
Some five or six thousand infested Paris alone. The police were ever
on the alert, but failed to put their hands upon the ringleader, until
all at once an atrocious murder was committed in broad daylight in the
populous quarter of the Temple.
Among the respectable dealers of that neighborhood was a family named
Renaud, father, mother and daughter, who kept a shop for the sale of
mattresses and bedding. One afternoon in June, Renaud meant to take
his wife and daughter for a walk, and sent the girl to their private
residence, hard by, to help her mother to dress. She found the rooms
securely locked, and, thinking her mother was within, asleep, went down
to ask her father if she should be awakened. On her return she met a
man coming down in a hurry, and a second, following. But still her
mother’s door was closed. Still no answer came to her knocking, and
she again sought her father, who now ascended and broke into the room
with a hatchet. Madame Renaud was lying dead upon the floor, bearing
many wounds. It was subsequently found that a bag of gold had been
abstracted from the room, a quantity of silver money and several pieces
of plate. Beyond question the strange men first seen were the authors
of the crime. As the men reached the street a woman had met them,
and heard a sound of silver rattling down on the pavement. Some one
also cried after them: “Here! You’ve dropped a silver spoon;” and the
smaller of the two paused to pick it up and run on. Others noted them
as they passed, and that their clothes were much stained with blood.
But they went on, and entered a café, where they called for two glasses
of sugared water. Their haggard looks attracted attention, and they
were seen using the water bottle to wash their hands below the table.
Evidently disturbed, and dreading further observation, they got up and
hurriedly left the café.
The description given of these two men fitted with that of a couple
of convicts recently released from Toulon. Search was made for them,
and, as it progressed, the police came upon several confederates, all
members of a gang in which these two, by name Soufflard and Le Sage,
were leading spirits. With a third, called Micaud, they formed the
executive of this criminal association. They had all been at Toulon
together, and were known there as the most violent and intractable
prisoners. When a new act of insubordination was planned, a new series
of thefts, this trio always originated or were concerned in it. Le Sage
in particular was a terror to his keepers. He had a sister of the same
type as himself, a half savage peasant woman, who hawked bread about
in a basket, but whose real occupation was that of spy, who hunted out
jobs for execution, promising great profit to those who could bring
them off. She had trained a small son to assist her, a precocious
child, who was an adroit thief on his own account. Inspired and guided
by these chiefs, a number of lesser practitioners were kept constantly
busy. Crimes multiplied throughout Paris; jewellers’ shops were broken
into, and private apartments by force or with false keys; shops were
explored by pretended purchasers of goods, and their weak points laid bare and a descent made next night.
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