him as large for a woman. She said that she had spent her youth in
Lyons, but her accent was distinctly Parisian. The lady gave her name as
Madame de Lamotte, and asked for a power of attorney by which she could
give her husband the interest due to her on a sum of 30,000 livres,
part of the purchase-money of the estate of Buisson-Souef, which she
had recently sold. As Mme. de Lamotte represented herself as having been
sent to M. Pourra by a respectable merchant for whom he was in the
habit of doing business, he agreed to draw up the necessary document,
accepting her statement that she and her husband had separate estates.
Mme. de Lamotte said that she would not have time to wait until the
power of attorney was ready, and therefore asked M. Pourra to send it
to the parish priest at Villeneuvele-Roi; this he promised to do. Mme.
de-Lamotte had called twice during the day at the Hotel Blanc and asked
for M. Desportes of Paris, but he was not at home. While Derues, alias
Desportes, alias Mme. de Lamotte, was masquerading in Lyons, events had
been moving swiftly and unfavourably in Paris. Sick with misgiving and
anxiety, M. de Lamotte had come there to find, if possible, his wife and
child. By a strange coincidence he alighted at an inn in the Rue de la
Mortellerie, only a few yards from the wine-cellar in which the corpse
of his ill-fated wife lay buried. He lost no time in putting his case
before the Lieutenant of Police, who placed the affair in the hands
of one of the magistrates of the Chatelet, then the criminal court of
Paris. At first the magistrate believed that the case was one of fraud
and that Mme. de Lamotte and her son were being kept somewhere in
concealment by Derues. But as he investigated the circumstances further,
the evidence of the illness of the mother and son, the date of the
disappearance of Mme. de Lamotte, and her reputed signature to the deed
of sale on February 12, led him to suspect that he was dealing with a
case of murder.
When Derues returned to Paris from Lyons, on March 11, he found that the
police had already visited the house and questioned his wife, and
that he himself was under close surveillance. A day or two later the
advocate, Duclos, revealed to the magistrate the fictitious character
of the loan of 100,000 livres, which Derues alleged that he had paid
to Mme. de Lamotte as the price of Buisson-Souef. When the new power of
attorney purporting to be signed by Mme. de Lamotte arrived from
Lyons, and the signature was compared with that on the deed of sale of
Buisson-Souef to Derues, both were pronounced to be forgeries. Derues
was arrested and lodged in the Prison of For l'Eveque.
The approach of danger had not dashed the spirits of the little man, nor
was he without partisans in Paris. Opinion in the city was divided as
to the truth of his account of Mme. de Lamotte's elopement. The nobility
were on the side of the injured de Lamotte, but the bourgeoisie
accepted the grocer's story and made merry over the deceived husband.
Interrogated, however, by the magistrate of the Chatelet, Derues'
position became more difficult. Under the stress of close questioning
the flimsy fabric of his financial statements fell to pieces like a
house of cards. He had to admit that he had never paid Mme. de Lamotte
100,000 livres; he had paid her only 25,000 livres in gold; further
pressed he said that the 25,000 livres had been made up partly in gold,
partly in bills; but where the gold had come from, or on whom he had
drawn the bills, he could not explain. Still his position was not
desperate; and he knew it. In the absence of Mme. de Lamotte he could
not be charged with fraud or forgery; and until her body was discovered,
it would be impossible to charge him with murder.
A month passed; Mme. Derues, who had made a belated attempt to follow
her husband's example by impersonating Mme. de Lamotte in Paris, had
been arrested and imprisoned in the Grand Chatelet; when, on April 18,
information was received by the authorities which determined them to
explore the wine-cellar in the Rue de la Mortellerie. Whether the woman
who had let the cellar to Derues, or the creditor who had met him taking
his cask of wine there, had informed the investigating magistrate, seems
uncertain. In any case, the corpse of the unhappy lady was soon brought
to light and Derues confronted with it. At first he said that he failed
to recognise it as the remains of Mme. de Lamotte, but he soon abandoned
that rather impossible attitude. He admitted that he had given some
harmless medicine to Mme. de Lamotte during her illness, and then, to
his horror, one morning had awakened to find her dead. A fear lest
her husband would accuse him of having caused her death had led him to
conceal the body, and also that of her son who, he now confessed, had
died and been buried by him at Versailles. On April 23 the body of the
young de Lamotte was exhumed. Both bodies were examined by doctors, and
they declared themselves satisfied that mother and son had died "from
a bitter and corrosive poison administered in some kind of drink." What
the poison was they did not venture to state, but one of their number,
in the light of subsequent investigation, arrived at the conclusion that
Derues had used in both cases corrosive sublimate. How or where he had
obtained the poison was never discovered.
Justice moved swiftly in Paris in those days. The preliminary
investigation in Derues' case was ended on April 28. Two days later his
trial commenced before the tribunal of the Chatelet.
It lasted one day. The judges had before them the depositions taken by
the examining magistrate. Both Derues and his wife were interrogated. He
maintained that he had not poisoned either Mme. de Lamotte or her son;
his only crime, he said, lay in having concealed their deaths. Mme;
Derues said: "It is Buisson-Souef that has ruined us! I always told my
husband that he was mad to buy these properties--I am sure my husband is
not a poisoner--I trusted my husband and believed every word he said."
The court condemned Derues to death, but deferred judgment in his wife's
case on the ground of her pregnancy.
And now the frail, cat-like little man had to brace himself to meet
a cruel and protracted execution. But sanguine to the last, he still
hoped. An appeal lay from the Chatelet to the Parliament of Paris. It
was heard on March 5. Derues was brought to the Palais de Justice.
The room in which he waited was filled with curious spectators, who
marvelled at his coolness and impudence. He recognised among them a
Benedictine monk of his acquaintance. "My case," he called out to him,
"will soon be over; we'll meet again yet and have a good time together."
One visitor, wishing not to appear too curious, pretended to be looking
at a picture. "Come, sir," said Derues, "you haven't come here to see
the pictures, but to see me. Have a good look at me. Why study copies of
nature when you can look at such a remarkable original as I?" But there
were to be no more days of mirth and gaiety for the jesting grocer. His
appeal was rejected, and he was ordered for execution on the morrow.
At six o'clock on the morning of May 6 Derues returned to the Palais
de Justice, there to submit to the superfluous torments of the question
ordinary and extraordinary. Though condemned to death, torture was to
be applied in the hope of wringing from the prisoner some sort of
confession. The doctors declared him too delicate to undergo the torture
of pouring cold water into him, which his illustrious predecessor, Mme.
de Brinvilliers, had suffered; he was to endure the less severe torture
of the "boot."
His legs were tightly encased in wood, and wedges were then hammered in
until the flesh was crushed and the bones broken. But never a word
of confession was wrung from the suffering creature. Four wedges
constituting the ordinary torture he endured; at the third of the
extraordinary he fainted away. Put in the front of a fire the warmth
restored him. Again he was questioned, again he asserted his wife's
innocence and his own.
At two o'clock in the afternoon Derues was recovered sufficiently to be
taken to Notre Dame. There, in front of the Cathedral, candle in hand
and rope round his neck, he made the amende honorable. But as the
sentence was read aloud to the people Derues reiterated the assertion
of his innocence. From Notre Dame he was taken to the Hotel de Ville.
A condemned man had the right to stop there on his way to execution,
to make his will and last dying declarations. Derues availed himself
of this opportunity to protest solemnly and emphatically his wife's
absolute innocence of any complicity in whatever he had done. "I want
above all," he said, "to state that my wife is entirely innocent. She
knew nothing. I used fifty cunning devices to hide everything from her.
I am speaking nothing but the truth, she is wholly innocent--as for me,
I am about to die." His wife was allowed to see him; he enjoined her to
bring up their children in the fear of God and love of duty, and to let
them know how he had died. Once again, as he took up the pen to sign the
record of his last words, he re-asserted her innocence.
Of the last dreadful punishment the offending grocer was to be spared
nothing. For an aristocrat like Mme. de Brinvilliers beheading was
considered indignity enough. But Derues must go through with it all; he
must be broken on the wheel and burnt alive and his ashes scattered to
the four winds of heaven; there was to be no retentum for him, a
clause sometimes inserted in the sentence permitting the executioner to
strangle the broken victim before casting him on to the fire. He must
endure all to the utmost agony the law could inflict. It was six o'clock
when Derues arrived at the Place de Greve, crowded to its capacity, the
square itself, the windows of the houses; places had been bought at high
prices, stools, ladders, anything that would give a good view of the end
of the now famous poisoner.
Pale but calm, Derues faced his audience. He was stripped of all but his
shirt; lying flat on the scaffold, his face looking up to the sky, his
head resting on a stone, his limbs were fastened to the wheel. Then with
a heavy bar of iron the executioner broke them one after another, and
each time he struck a fearful cry came from the culprit. The customary
three final blows on the stomach were inflicted, but still the little
man lived. Alive and broken, he was thrown on to the fire. His burnt
ashes, scattered to the winds, were picked up eagerly by the mob,
reputed, as in England the pieces of the hangman's rope, talismans.
Some two months after the execution of her husband Mme. Derues was
delivered in the Conciergerie of a male child; it is hardly surprising,
in face of her experiences during her pregnancy, that it was born an
idiot. In January, 1778, the judges of the Parliament, by a majority of
one, decided that she should remain a prisoner in the Conciergerie for
another year, while judgment in her case was reserved. In the following
August she was charged with having forged the signature of Mme. de
Lamotte on the deeds of sale. In February, 1779, the two experts in
handwriting to whom the question had been submitted decided in her
favour, and the charge was abandoned.
But Mme. Derues had a far sterner, more implacable and, be it added,
more unscrupulous adversary than the law in M. de Lamotte.
Not content with her husband's death, M. de Lamotte believed the wife to
have been his partner in guilt, and thirsted for revenge.
To accomplish it he even stooped to suborn witnesses, but the conspiracy
was exposed, and so strong became the sympathy with the accused woman
that a young proctor of the Parliament published a pamphlet in her
defence, asking for an immediate inquiry into the charges made against
her, charges that had in no instance been proved.
At last, in March, 1779, the Parliament decided to finish with the
affair. In secret session the judges met, examined once more all the
documents in the case, listened to a report on it from one of their
number, interrogated the now weary, hopeless prisoner, and, by a large
majority, condemned her to a punishment that fell only just short of
the supreme penalty. On the grounds that she had wilfully and knowingly
participated with her husband in the fraudulent attempt to become
possessed of the estate of Buisson-Souef, and was strongly suspected of
having participated with him in his greater crime, she was sentenced
to be publicly flogged, branded on both shoulders with the letter V
(Voleuse) and imprisoned for life in the Salpetriere Prison. On March
13, in front of the Conciergerie Mme. Derues underwent the first part of
her punishment. The same day her hair was cut short, and she was dressed
in the uniform of the prison in which she was to pass the remainder of
her days.
Paris had just begun to forget Mme. Derues when a temporary interest
was-excited in her fortunes by the astonishing intelligence that, two
months after her condemnation, she had been delivered of a child in her
new prison. Its fatherhood was never determined, and, taken from her
mother, the child died in fifteen days. Was its birth the result of some
passing love affair, or some act of drunken violence on the part of her
jailors, or had the wretched woman, fearing a sentence of death, made an
effort to avert once again the supreme penalty? History does not relate.
Ten years passed. A fellow prisoner in the Salpetriere described Mme.
Derues as "scheming, malicious, capable of anything." She was accused
of being violent, and of wishing to revenge herself by setting fire to
Paris. At length the Revolution broke on France, the Bastille fell, and
in that same year an old uncle of Mme. Derues, an ex-soldier of
Louis XV., living in Brittany, petitioned for his niece's release. He
protested her innocence, and begged that he might take her to his home
and restore her to her children. For three years he persisted vainly in
his efforts. At last, in the year 1792, it seemed as if they might be
crowned with success. He was told that the case would be re-examined;
that it was possible that the Parliament had judged unjustly. This good
news came to him in March. But in September of that year there took
place those shocking massacres in the Paris prisons, which rank high
among the atrocities of the Revolution. At four o'clock on the afternoon
of September 4, the slaughterers visited the Salpetriere Prison, and
fifth among their victims fell the widow of Derues.
Dr. Castaing
There are two reports of the trial of Castaing: "Proces Complet d'Edme
Samuel Castaing," Paris, 1823; "Affaire Castaing," Paris, 1823.
I
AN UNHAPPY COINCIDENCE
Edme Castaing, born at Alencon in 1796, was the youngest of the three
sons of an Inspector-General in the department of Woods and Forests.
His elder brother had entered the same service as his father, the other
brother was a staff-captain of engineers. Without being wealthy, the
family, consisting of M. and Mme. Castaing and four children, was in
comfortable circumstances. The young Edme was educated at the College of
Angers--the Alma Mater of Barre and Lebiez--where, intelligent and hard
working, he carried off many prizes. He decided to enter the medical
profession, and at the age of nineteen commenced his studies at the
School of Medicine in Paris. For two years he worked hard and well,
living within the modest allowance made him by his father. At the end of
that time this young man of two or three-and-twenty formed a passionate
attachment for a lady, the widow of a judge, and the mother of three
children. Of the genuine depth and sincerity of this passion for a woman
who must have been considerably older than himself, there can be no
doubt. Henceforth the one object in life to Castaing was to make money
enough to relieve the comparative poverty of his adored mistress, and
place her and her children beyond the reach of want. In 1821 Castaing
became a duly qualified doctor, and by that time had added to the
responsibilities of his mistress and himself by becoming the father of
two children, whom she had brought into the world. The lady was exigent,
and Castaing found it difficult to combine his work with a due regard to
her claims on his society. Nor was work plentiful or lucrative. To add
to his embarrassments Castaing, in 1818, had backed a bill for a
friend for 600 francs. To meet it when it fell due two years later was
impossible, and desperate were the efforts made by Castaing and his
mother to put off the day of reckoning. His father, displeased with his
son's conduct, would do nothing to help him. But his mother spared
no effort to extricate him from his difficulties. She begged a highly
placed official to plead with the insistent creditor, but all in vain.
There seemed no hope of a further delay when suddenly, in the October
of 1822, Castaing became the possessor of 100,000 francs. How he became
possessed of this considerable sum of money forms part of a strange and
mysterious story.
Among the friends of Castaing were two young men of about his own age,
Auguste and Hippolyte Ballet. Auguste, the elder, had the misfortune
a few days after his birth to incur his mother's lasting dislike. The
nurse had let the child fall from her arms in the mother's presence, and
the shock had endangered Mme. Ballet's life. From that moment the
mother took a strong aversion to her son; he was left to the charge of
servants; his meals were taken in the kitchen. As soon as he was five
years old he was put out to board elsewhere, while his brother Hippolyte
and his sister were well cared for at home. The effect of this unjust
neglect on the character of Auguste Ballet was, as may be imagined, had;
he became indolent and dissipated. His brother Hippolyte, on the other
hand, had justified the affectionate care bestowed on his upbringing; he
had grown into a studious, intelligent youth of a refined and attractive
temperament. Unhappily, early in his life he had developed consumption,
a disease he inherited from his mother. As he grew older his health grew
steadily worse until, in 1822, his friends were seriously alarmed at his
condition. It became so much graver that, in the August of that year,
the doctors recommended him to take the waters at Enghien. In September
he returned to Paris apparently much better, but on October 2 he was
seized with sudden illness, and three days later he was dead.
A few years before the death of Hippolyte his father and mother had
died almost at the same time. M. Ballet had left to each of his sons a
fortune of some 260,000 francs. Though called to the bar, both Auguste
and Hippolyte Ballet were now men of independent means. After the death
of their parents, whatever jealousy Auguste may have felt at the unfair
preference which his mother had shown for her younger son, had died
down. At the time of Hippolyte's death the brothers were on good terms,
though the more prudent Hippolyte disapproved of his elder brother's
extravagance.
Of Hippolyte Ballet Dr. Castaing had become the fast friend. Apart
from his personal liking for Castaing, it was a source of comfort to
Hippolyte, in his critical state of health, to have as his friend one
whose medical knowledge was always at his service.
About the middle of August, 1822, Hippolyte, on the advice of his
doctors, went to Enghien to take the waters. There Castaing paid him
frequent visits. He returned to Paris on September 22, and seemed to
have benefited greatly by the cure. On Tuesday, October 1, he saw his
sister, Mme. Martignon, and her husband; he seemed well, but said that
he was having leeches applied to him by his friend Castaing. On the
Wednesday evening his sister saw him again, and found him well and with
a good appetite. On the Thursday, after a night disturbed by severe
attacks of vomiting, his condition seemed serious. His brother-in-law,
who visited him, found that he had taken to his bed, his face was
swollen, his eyes were red. His sister called in the evening, but could
not see him. The servants told her that her brother was a little better
but resting, and that he did not wish to be disturbed; they said that
Dr. Castaing had been with him all day.
On Friday Castaing himself called on the Martignons, and told them that
Hippolyte had passed a shockingly bad night. Madame Martignon insisted
on going to nurse her brother herself, but Castaing refused positively
to let her see him; the sight of her, he said, would be too agitating
to the patient. Later in the day Mme. Martignon went to her brother's
house. In order to obey Dr. Castaing's injunctions, she dressed herself
in some of the clothes of the servant Victoire, in the hope that if she
went into his bedroom thus disguised, Hippolyte would not recognise her.
But even this subterfuge was forbidden by Castaing, and Mme. Martignon
had to content herself with listening in an adjoining room for the sound
of her brother's voice. At eight o'clock that evening the Martignons
learnt that Hippolyte was better, but at ten o'clock they received a
message that he was dying, and that his brother Auguste had been sent
for. Mme. Martignon was prostrated with grief, but her husband hastened
to his brother-in-law's house. There he found Castaing, who said that
the death agony of his friend was so dreadful that he had not the
strength to remain in the room with the dying man. Another doctor was
sent for, but at ten o'clock the following morning, after protracted
suffering, Hippolyte Ballet passed away.
A post-mortem was held on his body. It was made by Drs. Segalas and
Castaing. They stated that death was due to pleurisy aggravated by the
consumptive condition of the deceased, which, however serious, was not
of itself likely to have been so rapidly fatal in its consequences.
Hippolyte had died, leaving a fortune of some 240,000 francs. In the
previous September he had spoken to the notary Lebret, a former clerk
of his father's, of his intention of making a will. He had seen that his
brother Auguste was squandering his share of their inheritance; he told
Lebret that whatever he might leave to Auguste should not be placed at
his absolute disposal. To his servant Victoire, during his last illness,
Hippolyte had spoken of a will he had made which he wished to destroy.
If Hippolyte had made such a will, did he destroy it before his death?
In any case, no trace of it was ever found after his death. He
was presumed to have died intestate, and his fortune was divided,
three-quarters of it going to his brother Auguste, the remaining quarter
to his sister, Mme. Martignon.
On the day of Hippolyte's death Auguste Ballet wrote from his brother's
house to one Prignon: "With great grief I have to tell you that I have
just lost my brother; I write at the same time to say that I must have
100,000 francs to-day if possible. I have the greatest need of it.
Destroy my letter, and reply at once. M. Sandrie will, I am sure,
accommodate me. I am at my poor brother's house, from which I am
writing." Prignon did as he was asked, but it was two days before the
stockbroker, Sandrie, could raise the necessary sum. On October 7 he
sold out sufficient of Auguste's stock to realise 100,000 francs, and
the following day gave Prignon an order on the Bank of France for that
amount. The same day Prignon took the order to Auguste. Accompanied by
Castaing and Jean, Auguste's black servant, Auguste and Prignon drove to
the bank. There the order was cashed. Prignon's part of the business was
at an end. He said good-bye to Auguste outside the bank. As the latter
got into his cabriolet, carrying the bundle of notes, Prignon heard him
say to Castaing: "There are the 100,000 francs."