The History and Romance of Crime 16

The History and Romance of Crime 16

Le Sage, who had been locked up for a brief space in La Force, was,

on his release, informed by his sister of the chances offered by the

Renaud establishment in the Temple. He saw at once that robbery could

hardly be effected without violence, which he did not shrink from, but

he wanted a stalwart companion. Soufflard, who was also at large, was

thirsting for some “big thing,” and willingly joined in the attack upon

the Renauds. The crime once committed, the police were soon on the

track of the murderers, guided by the indications of false friends. Le

Sage was taken first, and easily identified. Soufflard, who had three

separate domiciles, and was very wary, was only caught through the

help of a jealous comrade, who denounced him. Trial and conviction

rapidly followed, but Soufflard after the sentence, evading the

supervision of the warders, who were removing him to the Conciergerie,

swallowed a quantity of arsenic, and died of the effects. Le Sage also

committed suicide by hanging himself in his cell.

 

Crime is of no class, and in all countries and in all ages, high born

offenders, as well as low, have stood in the dock to answer for their

misdeeds. There are two cases about this period that may be quoted

here in proof of this particular statement; one the alleged poisoning

of her husband by Madame Lafarge; the other, the horrible murder of

the Duchesse de Choiseul-Praslin by her husband, the Duke, at their

mansion, the Hotel Sebastiani in the Faubourg St. Honoré, Paris. Both

take rank with the most celebrated cases, and attracted extraordinary

interest, which has but little abated even now.

 

The case of Madame Lafarge is still an unsolved mystery. Grave doubts

as to her guilt prevailed, and many learned lawyers have maintained

that she was the victim of judicial error. The accused, Marie Fortunée

Cappelle, was a young lady in good society, well educated and well

bred, who had married a manufacturer at Glandier in the Limoges

country, not far from Bordeaux. She was the daughter of a colonel in

Napoleon’s Artillery of the Guard. She was well connected. Her aunts

were well married, one to a Prussian diplomatist, the other to Monsieur

Garat, the General Secretary of the Bank of France. Her father had

stood well with Napoleon, had held several important military commands,

and was intimate with many of the nobles of the First Empire. Marie

lost her parents early, and, being possessed of a certain fortune,

a marriage was sought for her in the usual French way. She was not

exactly pretty, but was distinguished looking, with a slim, graceful

figure, a dead white complexion, jet black eyes and a sweet, sad smile.

 

The husband chosen was a certain Charles Pouch Lafarge, a man of fair

position, but decidedly the inferior of Marie Cappelle. He was in

business as an iron master, and was deemed prosperous. He said he had

a large private residence in the neighborhood of his works, a fine

mansion, situated in a wide park, where his wife would be in the midst

of agreeable and fashionable society. Great, almost indecent, haste

was shown in arranging and solemnising the marriage. Within five days

the bride started for her new home, and quickly realised that she had

been completely befooled. M. Lafarge at once showed himself in his

true colors as a rough, brutal creature, who treated his wife badly

from the first. The family seat at Glandier was a fraud. It was a

damp, dark house in a street, surrounded with smoky chimneys. The park

did not exist, nor did the pleasant neighbors. She had been grossly

deceived, and the reality was even worse than it appeared, for Lafarge

was in serious financial difficulties, and had been obliged to issue

forged bills of exchange to keep his head above water. The unhappy and

disappointed wife, when face to face with the truth, made a determined

effort to break loose from Lafarge. On the very day of her arrival at

Glandier, she shut herself up in her room, and wrote him an indignant

yet appealing letter, in which she threatened, if he would not let her

go, to take arsenic. And this, her first mention of the lethal drug,

was remembered against her in later days, when she was tried for her

life.

 

Peace was patched up between the ill-assorted couple, and Marie was

persuaded to withdraw her letter and promise to do her best to accept

the position, and make her husband happy. “With a little strength of

mind,” she wrote to an uncle, “with patience and my husband’s love, I

may grow contented. Charles adores me, and I cannot but be touched by

the caresses he lavishes on me.” He must have been willing enough to

secure her good graces, for he wanted her to part with her fortune to

improve his business. He had discovered a new process in iron-smelting,

which promised to be profitable, and his wife lent him money to develop

the invention. Then he hurried to Paris to secure the patent, and while

absent from Glandier, where his wife remained, the first event occurred

on which the suspicion of foul play was based. Madame Lafarge was now

so affectionately disposed that she desired to send her portrait to

her husband. The picture was to be accompanied by a number of small

cakes prepared by the mother-in-law, and Marie Lafarge wrote to beg

her husband to eat one at a particular hour on a particular day. She

would do the same at Glandier, and thereby set up some mysterious

_rapport_ with her husband. When the parcel arrived, the picture was

found within, but no small cakes, only one large one. The box had been

tampered with. When it left Glandier, it was screwed down. It reached

Paris fastened with long nails. Lafarge, on opening it, broke off a

part of the large cake, and ate it. That night he was taken violently

ill. The cake presumably contained poison, but the fact was never

proved, still less that Marie Lafarge had inserted the arsenic, which

it was supposed to contain. The evidence against her was that she

had bought some of this baneful drug from a chemist at Glandier. The

charge was definitely made, but on weak evidence, the chief being the

purchased arsenic and her manifest agitation when the news came from

Paris that her husband had been taken ill. On the other hand, there was

nothing to show that she had substituted the large poisoned cake for

the small ones, or that no one else had handled the parcel. Here crept

in the notion of another agency, and the suggestion that some one else

might have been anxious to poison Lafarge. This idea was by no means

extravagant, and it cropped up more than once during the proceedings,

but no proper attention was paid to it. Had the clue been followed, it

might have led inquiry to the possible guilt of another person.

 

Lafarge returned from Paris a good deal shaken, but the doctor promised

that with rest his health would be restored. On the contrary it got

worse, and with symptoms which to-day would undoubtedly be attributed

to arsenical poisoning. Marie Lafarge would have constituted herself

sole nurse, but the mother-in-law would not agree, and would never

leave her alone with her husband. Witnesses deposed to having seen

Marie take a white powder from a cupboard, which she mixed with the

chicken broth and medicine given to Lafarge. Another witness declared

that the patient cried out “that his medicine burnt out like fire.”

 

All this time Marie Lafarge did not conceal her possession of arsenic.

She bought it openly to kill rats, she said: a very hackneyed excuse.

It had been bought through one of Lafarge’s clerks, Denis Barbier by

name, upon whom rested strong suspicion from first to last. Barbier

was a man of bad character, passing under a false name. He had been

the secret accomplice of Lafarge in passing forged bills, and a shrewd

theory was advanced that all along he was scheming to supplant his

master and take possession of his property after he (Lafarge) had been

made away with. Barbier’s conduct was such that the Prussian jurists

who investigated the trial afterwards declared that they would have

accused him of the crime rather than Madame Lafarge.

 

The trial was no doubt conducted with gross carelessness. A post-mortem

was made, but not until it was insisted upon, and it was very

imperfectly performed. When at length the corpse was disinterred,

only an infinitesimal quantity of arsenic was at first found in

the remains, but when the most eminent scientists of the day were

called in, it was established by M. Orfila that the deceased had been

poisoned. The circumstances of the case fixed the guilt upon Madame

Lafarge. She was very ably defended by the famous Maitre Lachaud, but

the jury had no doubt, and condemned her by a majority of voices. At

the same time she was given the benefit of extenuating circumstances,

and sentenced to _travaux forcés_ for life, with exposure in the

public square of Tulle. This decision, although supported by science,

was not universally approved. Many believed in her innocence to the

last, and the number of her sympathisers was legion. She endured her

imprisonment at Montpelier, where she remained for many years, engaged

almost continually in literary work. Her “Memoirs” and a work entitled

“Prison Hours” were largely read. She also conducted an enormous

correspondence, for she was permitted to receive and send out an

unlimited number of letters. No less than six thousand passed through

her hands. At length in 1852 she petitioned the head of the State, and

was released with a full pardon by Napoleon III.

 

It is impossible at this length of time to settle a question so keenly

debated by her contemporaries. The possibility of her having served

for another’s crime hardly rests on any very strong basis, and the

circumstances that led to her arraignment were very much against

her. It must not be forgotten, moreover, that she was charged with

a crime other than that of theft, and was convicted of it. In this

again she may have suffered unjustly. A school friend, who had become

the wife of the Vicomte de Leautaud, accused her of having stolen her

diamonds, when on a visit at her house. Marie Lafarge freely admitted

the diamonds were in her possession, and pointed out where they might

be found at Glandier, but she refuted the accusation of theft, and

declared that the Vicomtesse had entrusted the diamonds to her to be

sold. Her former lover threatened blackmail, and Madame de Leautaud

was driven to buy him off--this was Marie’s explanation, which Madame

de Leautaud repelled by declaring that it was Marie Lafarge who was

threatened, and that the diamonds were to be sacrificed to save her

good name. In the end, the case was tried in open court, and Madame

Lafarge was found guilty, although there were many contradictory facts.

It was strange that the Vicomtesse so long refrained from complaining

of the theft, and made so little of the loss. Marie, on the other hand,

scarcely secreted the jewels, and was known to have a number of fine

loose stones, for which she variously accounted--one story being that

they were a gift, another that she had owned them from childhood. A

sentence of two years’ imprisonment was passed upon Madame Lafarge, but

it merged in the larger term, when she was convicted of having poisoned

her husband.

 

The murder of the Duchesse de Choiseul-Praslin by the husband shocked

all Europe, not only on account of the horrible details of the deed,

but from the high rank of the parties concerned. The Duke held his

head high as the representative of an ancient family, and his unhappy

victim was one of the leaders of French fashionable society. She was

the daughter of one of the first Napoleon’s famous generals, the Count

Sebastian, and when in Paris they resided at the Sebastian Hotel in

the Faubourg St. Honoré, in the Champs Elysées. In August, 1840, the

family came from their country seat, the magnificent Chateau of Vaux,

constructed by the famous Fouquet, Louis XIV’s finance minister, who

fell into such irretrievable disgrace, and died after long years of

close imprisonment.

 

It was not a happy marriage, although ten children had been born to

them. But the Duke and Duchess had become estranged as the years passed

by, and were practically separated. Although still residing under the

same roof, they held no communication with each other. What is now

called incompatibility of temper was the cause, and the Duke was a

masterful, overbearing man, who wanted his own way, and had his own

ideas as to the bringing up of his children. He would not suffer his

wife to have any voice in their education and management, but claimed

to control them completely through their governesses, who were quickly

changed if they failed to give satisfaction. One at last was found to

suit, and the fact served to suggest a motive for the crime. Whether

or not there was really an intrigue between this Madame Deluzy and the

Duke, it was strongly suspected, and the Duchess certainly detested

her. The Duke put the governess in a false position. He preferred her

society, and lived much with his children committed to her charge, in a remote wing of the house.