The house that joined Madame Lalaurie's premises on the eastern side had a
staircase window that looked down into her little courtyard. One day all
by chance the lady of that adjoining house was going up those stairs just
when the keen scream of a terrified child resounded from the next yard.
She sprung to the window, and, looking down, saw a little negro girl about
eight years old run wildly across the yard and into the house, with Madame
Lalaurie, a cow-hide whip in her hand, following swiftly and close upon
her.
They disappeared; but by glimpses through the dark lattices and by the
sound of the tumult, the lady knew that the child was flying up stairway
after stairway, from gallery to gallery, hard pressed by her furious
mistress. Soon she heard them rise into the belvedere and the next instant
they darted out upon the roof. Down into its valleys and up over its
ridges the little fugitive slid and scrambled. She reached the sheer edge,
the lady at the window hid her face in her hands, there came a dull,
jarring thud in the paved court beneath, and the lady, looking down, saw
the child lifted from the ground and borne out of sight, limp, silent,
dead.
She kept her place at the window. Hours passed, the day waned, darkness
settled down. Then she saw a torch brought, a shallow hole was dug,--as it
seemed to her; but in fact a condemned well of slight depth, a mere pit,
was uncovered,--and the little broken form was buried. She informed the
officers of justice. From what came to light at a later season, it is hard
to think that in this earlier case the investigation was more than
superficial. Yet an investigation was made, and some legal action was
taken against Madame Lalaurie for cruelty to her slaves. They were taken
from her and--liberated? Ah! no. They were sold by the sheriff, bid in by
her relatives, and by them sold back to her. Let us believe that this is
what occurred, or at least was shammed; for unless we do we must accept
the implication of a newspaper statement of two or three years
afterwards, and the confident impression of an aged Creole gentleman and
notary still living who was an eye-witness to much of this story, that all
Madame Lalaurie ever suffered for this part of her hideous misdeeds was a
fine. Lawyers will doubtless remind us that Madame Lalaurie was not
legally chargeable with the child's death. The lady at the window was not
the only witness who might have been brought. A woman still living, who
after the civil war was for years a domestic in this "haunted house," says
her husband, now long dead, then a lad, was passing the place when the
child ran out on the roof, and he saw her scrambling about on it seeking
to escape. But he did not see the catastrophe that followed. No one saw
more than what the law knows as assault; and the child was a slave.
Miss Martineau, in her short account of the matter, which she heard in New
Orleans and from eye-witnesses only a few years after it had occurred,
conjectures that Madame Lalaurie's object in buying back these slaves was
simply to renew her cruelties upon them. But a much easier, and even
kinder, guess would be that they knew things about her that had not been
and must not be told, if she could possibly prevent it. A high temper, let
us say, had led her into a slough of misdoing to a depth beyond all her
expectation, and the only way out was on the farther side.
Yet bring to bear all the generous conjecture one can, and still the fact
stands that she did starve, whip, and otherwise torture these poor
victims. She even mistreated her daughters for conveying to them food
which she had withheld. Was she not insane? One would hope so; but we
cannot hurry to believe just what is most comfortable or kindest. That
would be itself a kind of "emotional insanity." If she was insane, how
about her husband? For Miss Martineau, who was told that he was no party
to her crimes, was misinformed; he was as deep in the same mire as passive
complicity could carry him. If she was insane her insanity stopped
abruptly at her plump, well-fed coachman. He was her spy against all
others. And if she was insane, then why did not her frequent guests at
table suspect it?
All that society knew was that she had carried her domestic discipline to
excess, had paid dearly for it, and no doubt was desisting and would
henceforth desist from that kind of thing. Enough allowance can hardly be
made in our day for the delicacy society felt about prying into one of its
own gentleman or lady member's treatment of his or her own servants. Who
was going to begin such an inquiry--John Fitz Miller?
And so time passed, and the beautiful and ever sweet and charming Madame
Lalaurie--whether sane or insane we leave to the doctors, except Dr.
Lalaurie--continued to drive daily, yearly, on the gay Bayou Road, to
manage her business affairs, and to gather bright groups around her
tempting board, without their suspicion that she kept her cook in the
kitchen by means of a twenty-four-foot chain fastened to her person and to
the wall or floor.
And yet let this be said to the people's credit, that public suspicion
and indignation steadily grew. But they were still only growing when one
day, the both of April, 1834, the aged cook,--she was seventy,--chained as
she was, purposely set the house on fire. It is only tradition that,
having in a dream the night before seen the drawing-room window curtains
on fire, she seized the happy thought and made the dream a reality. But it
is in the printed record of the day that she confessed the deed to the
mayor of the city.
The desperate stratagem succeeds. The alarm of fire spreads to the street
and a hundred men rush, in, while a crowd throngs the streets. Some are
neighbors, some friends, some strangers. One is M. Montreuil, the
gentleman who has so long been watching his chance to bring the law upon
the house and its mistress. Young D----, a notary's clerk, is another. And
another is Judge Cononge--Aha! And there are others of good and well-known
name!
The fire has got a good start; the kitchen is in flames; the upper stories
are filling with smoke. Strangers run to the place whence it all comes and
fall to fighting the fire. Friends rally to the aid of Monsieur and Madame
Lalaurie. The pretty lady has not lost one wit--is at her very best. Her
husband is as passive as ever.
"This way," she cries; "this way! Take this--go, now, and hurry back, if
you please. This way!" And in a moment they are busy carrying out, and to
places of safety, plate, jewels, robes, and the lighter and costlier
pieces of furniture. "This way, please, gentlemen; that is only the
servants' quarters."
The servants' quarters--but where are the servants?
Madame's answers are witty but evasive. "Never mind them now--save the
valuables!"
Somebody touches Judge Canonge--"Those servants are chained and locked up
and liable to perish."
"Where?"
"In the garret rooms."
He hurries towards them, but fails to reach them, and returns, driven back
and nearly suffocated by the smoke. He looks around him--this is no sketch
of the fancy; we have his deposition sworn before a magistrate next
day--and sees some friends of the family. He speaks to them:
"I am told"--so and so--"can it be? Will you speak to Monsieur or to
Madame?" But the friends repulse him coldly.
He turns and makes fresh inquiries of others. He notices two gentlemen
near him whom he knows. One is Montreuil. "Here, Montreuil, and you,
Fernandez, will you go to the garret and search? I am blind and half
smothered." Another--he thinks it was Felix Lefebre--goes in another
direction, most likely towards the double door between the attics of the
house and wing. Montreuil and Fernandez come back saying they have
searched thoroughly and found nothing. Madame Lalaurie begs them, with all
her sweetness, to come other ways and consider other things. But here is
Lefebre. He cries, "I have found some of them! I have broken some bars,
but the doors are locked!"
Judge Canonge hastens through the smoke. They reach the spot.
"Break the doors down!" Down come the doors. The room they push into is a
"den." They bring out two negresses. One has a large heavy iron collar at
the neck and heavy irons on her feet. The fire is subdued now, they say,
but the search goes on. Here is M. Guillotte; he has found another victim
in another room. They push aside a mosquito-net and see a negro woman,
aged, helpless, and with a deep wound in the head.
Some of the young men lift her and carry her out.
Judge Canonge confronts Doctor Lalaurie again:
"Are there slaves still in your garret, Monsieur?" And the doctor "replies
with insulting tone that 'There are persons who would do much better by
remaining at home than visiting others to dictate to them laws in the
quality of officious friends.'"
The search went on. The victims were led or carried out. The sight that
met the public eye made the crowd literally groan with horror and shout
with indignation. "We saw," wrote the editor of the "Advertiser" next day,
"one of these miserable beings. The sight was so horrible that we could
scarce look upon it. The most savage heart could not have witnessed the
spectacle unmoved. He had a large hole in his head; his body from head to
foot was covered with scars and filled with worms! The sight inspired us
with so much horror that even at the moment of writing this article we
shudder from its effects. Those who have seen the others represent them to
be in a similar condition." One after another, seven dark human forms were
brought forth, gaunt and wild-eyed with famine and loaded with irons,
having been found chained and tied in attitudes in which they had been
kept so long that they were crippled for life.
It must have been in the first rush of the inside throng to follow these
sufferers into the open air and sunlight that the quick-witted Madame
Lalaurie clapped to the doors of her house with only herself and her
daughters--possibly the coachman also--inside, and nothing but locks and
bars to defend her from the rage of the populace. The streets under her
windows--Royal street here, Hospital yonder--and the yard were thronged.
Something by and by put some one in mind to look for buried bodies. There
had been nine slaves besides the coachman; where were the other two? A
little digging brought their skeletons to light--an adult's out of the
soil, and the little child's out of the "condemned well"; there they lay.
But the living seven--the indiscreet crowd brought them food and drink in
fatal abundance, and before the day was done two more were dead. The
others were tenderly carried--shall we say it?--to prison;--to the
calaboose. Thither "at least two thousand people" flocked that day to see,
if they might, these wretched sufferers.
A quiet fell upon the scene of the morning's fire. The household and its
near friends busied themselves in getting back the jewelry, plate,
furniture, and the like, the idle crowd looking on in apathy and
trusting, it may be, to see arrests made. But the restoration was finished
and the house remained close barred; no arrest was made. As for Dr.
Lalaurie, he does not appear in this scene. Then the crowd, along in the
afternoon, began to grow again; then to show anger and by and by to hoot
and groan, and cry for satisfaction.