asked him to take her to the masked ball at the Opera on the 13th. Her
lover was rather surprised at her request, nor did he wish to appear
with her at so public a gathering. "I don't understand," he writes, "why
you are so anxious to go to the Opera. I can't see any real reason for
your wanting to tire yourself out at such a disreputable gathering.
However, if you are happy and well, and promise to be careful, I will
take you. I would be the last person, my dear little wife, to deny you
anything that would give you pleasure." But for some reason Georges was
unhappy, depressed. Some undefined presentiment of evil seems to have
oppressed him. His brother noticed his preoccupation.
He himself alludes to it in writing to his mistress: "I am depressed
this evening. For a very little I could break down altogether and give
way to tears. You can't imagine what horrid thoughts possess me. If I
felt your love close to me, I should be less sad." Against his better
inclination Georges promised to take the widow to the ball on the 13th.
He was to come to Paris on the night of the 12th.
II
THE WOUNDED PIGEON
On the afternoon of January 11, Gaudry called to see the widow. There
had been an accident at the distillery that morning, and work was
suspended for three days. The widow showed Gaudry the bottle containing
the vitriol which her nephew had procured for her use. She was ill,
suffering, she said; the only thing that could make her well again would
be the execution of her revenge on the son of the man who had defrauded
her so wickedly: "Make him suffer, here are the means, and I swear I
will be yours." She dropped a little of the vitriol on to the floor to
show its virulent effect. At first Gaudry was shocked, horrified. He
protested that he was a soldier, that he could not do such a deed; he
suggested that he should provoke the young man to a duel and kill
him. "That is no use," said the widow, always sensitive to social
distinctions; "he is not of your class, he would refuse to fight with
you." Mad with desire for the woman, his senses irritated and excited,
the ultimate gratification of his passion held alluringly before him,
the honest soldier consented to play the cowardly ruffian. The trick was
done. The widow explained to her accomplice his method of proceeding.
The building in the Rue de Boulogne, in which the widow had her
apartment, stood at the end of a drive some twenty-seven and a half
yards long and five and a half yards wide. About half-way up the drive,
on either side, there were two small houses, or pavilions, standing by
themselves and occupied by single gentlemen. The whole was shut off from
the street by a large gate, generally kept closed, in which a smaller
gate served to admit persons going in or out. According to the widow's
plan, the young man, her enemy's son, was to take her to the ball at the
Opera on the night of January 13. Gaudry was to wait in her apartment
until their return. When he heard the bell ring, which communicated with
the outer gate, he was to come down, take his place in the shadow of one
of the pavilions on either side of the drive, and from the cover of this
position fling in the face of the young man the vitriol which she had
given him. The widow herself, under the pretence of closing the smaller
gate, would be well behind the victim, and take care to leave the gate
open so that Gaudry could make his escape.
In spite of his reluctance, his sense of foreboding, Georges de Saint
Pierre came to Paris on the night of the 12th, which he spent at the
widow's apartment. He went to his own rooms on the morning of the 13th.
This eventful day, which, to quote Iago, was either to "make or
fordo quite" the widow, found her as calm, cool and deliberate in the
execution of her purpose as the Ancient himself. Gaudry came to her
apartment about five o'clock in the afternoon. The widow showed him the
vitriol and gave him final directions. She would, she said, return from
the ball about three o'clock in the morning. Gaudry was then sent
away till ten o'clock, as Georges was dining with her. He returned at
half-past ten and found the widow dressing, arraying herself in a pink
domino and a blonde wig. She was in excellent spirits. When Georges came
to fetch her, she put Gaudry into an alcove in the drawing-room which
was curtained off from the rest of the room. Always thoughtful, she had
placed a stool there that he might rest himself. Gaudry could hear her
laughing and joking with her lover. She reproached him playfully with
hindering her in her dressing. To keep him quiet, she gave him a book to
read, Montaigne's "Essays." Georges opened it and read the thirty-fifth
chapter of the second book, the essay on "Three Good Women," which tells
how three brave women of antiquity endured death or suffering in order
to share their husbands' fate. Curiously enough, the essay concludes
with these words, almost prophetic for the unhappy reader: "I am
enforced to live, and sometimes to live is magnanimity." Whilst Georges
went to fetch a cab, the widow released Gaudry from his place of
concealment, exhorted him to have courage, and promised him, if he
succeeded, the accomplishment of his desire. And so the gay couple
departed for the ball. There the widow's high spirits, her complete
enjoyment, were remarked by more than one of her acquaintances; she
danced one dance with her lover, and with another young man made an
engagement for the following week.
Meanwhile, at the Rue de Boulogne, Gaudry sat and waited in the widow's
bedroom. From the window he could see the gate and the lights of the cab
that was to bring the revellers home. The hours passed slowly. He tried
to read the volume of Montaigne where Georges had left it open, but the
words conveyed little to him, and he fell asleep. Between two and three
o'clock in the morning he was waked by the noise of wheels. They had
returned. He hurried downstairs and took up his position in the shadow
of one of the pavilions. As Georges de Saint Pierre walked up the drive
alone, for the widow had stayed behind to fasten the gate, he thought he
saw the figure of a man in the darkness. The next moment he was blinded
by the burning liquid flung in his face. The widow had brought down her
pigeon.
At first she would seem to have succeeded perfectly in her attempt.
Georges was injured for life, the sight of one eye gone, that of the
other threatened, his face sadly disfigured. Neither he nor anyone
else suspected the real author of the crime. It was believed that the
unfortunate man had been mistaken for some other person, and made by
accident the victim of an act of vengeance directed against another.
Georges was indeed all the widow's now, lodged in her own house to
nurse and care for. She undertook the duty with every appearance of
affectionate devotion. The unhappy patient was consumed with gratitude
for her untiring solicitude; thirty nights she spent by his bedside. His
belief in her was absolute. It was his own wish that she alone should
nurse him. His family were kept away, any attempts his relatives or
friends made to see or communicate with him frustrated by the zealous
widow.
It was this uncompromising attitude on her part toward the friends of
Georges, and a rumour which reached the ears of one of them that she
intended as soon as possible to take her patient away to Italy, that
sounded the first note of danger to her peace of mind. This friend
happened to be acquainted with the son of one of the Deputy Public
Prosecutors in Paris. To that official he confided his belief that there
were suspicious circumstances in the case of Georges de Saint Pierre.
The judicial authorities were informed and the case placed in the hands
of an examining magistrate. On February 2, nearly a month after the
crime, the magistrate, accompanied by Mace, then a commissary of police,
afterwards head of the Detective Department, paid a visit to the Rue de
Boulogne. Their reception was not cordial. It was only after they had
made known their official character that they got audience of the widow.
She entered the room, carrying in her hand a surgical spray, with which
she played nervously while the men of the law asked to see her charge.
She replied that it was impossible. Mace placed himself in front of the
door by which she had entered, and told her that her attitude was not
seemly. "Leave that spray alone," he said; "it might shoot over us, and
then perhaps we should be sprinkled as M. de Saint Pierre was." From
that moment, writes Mace, issue was joined between the widow and
himself.
The magistrate insisted on seeing the patient. He sat by his bedside.
M. de Saint Pierre told him that, having no enemies, he was sure he had
been the victim of some mistake, and that, as he claimed no damages
for his injuries, he did not wish his misfortune to be made public.
He wanted to be left alone with his brave and devoted nurse, and to be
spared the nervous excitement of a meeting with his family. He intended,
he added, to leave Paris shortly for change of scene and air. The widow
cut short the interview on the ground that her patient was tired.
It was inhuman, she said, to make him suffer so. The magistrate, before
leaving, asked her whither she intended taking her patient. She replied,
"To Italy." That, said the magistrate, would be impossible until his
inquiry was closed. In the meantime she might take him to any place
within the Department of the Seine; but she must be prepared to be under
the surveillance of M. Mace, who would have the right to enter her
house whenever he should think it expedient. With this disconcerting
intelligence the men of the law took leave of the widow.
She was no longer to be left in undisturbed possession of her prize.
Her movements were watched by two detectives. She was seen to go to
the bachelor lodgings of Georges and take away a portable desk, which
contained money and correspondence. More mysterious, however, was a
visit she paid to the Charonne Cemetery, where she had an interview with
an unknown, who was dressed in the clothes of a workman. She left the
cemetery alone, and the detectives lost track of her companion. This
meeting took place on February 11. Shortly after the widow left Paris
with Georges de Saint Pierre for the suburb of Courbevoie.
Mace had elicited certain facts from the porter at the Rue de Boulogne
and other witnesses, which confirmed his suspicion that the widow had
played a sinister part in her lover's misfortune. Her insistence that
he should take her to the ball on January 13; the fact that, contrary to
the ordinary politeness of a gentleman, he was walking in front of her
at the time of the attack; and that someone must have been holding the
gate open to enable the assailant to escape it was a heavy gate, which,
if left to itself after being opened, would swing too quickly on its
hinges and shut of its own accord--these facts were sufficient to
excite suspicion. The disappearance, too, of the man calling himself
her brother, who had been seen at her apartment on the afternoon of the
13th, coupled with the mysterious interview in the cemetery, suggested
the possibility of a crime in which the widow had had the help of an
accomplice. To facilitate investigation it was necessary to separate the
widow from her lover. The examining magistrate, having ascertained from
a medical report that such a separation would not be hurtful to the
patient, ordered the widow to be sent back to Paris, and the family of
M. de Saint Pierre to take her place. The change was made on March 6. On
leaving Courbevoie the widow was taken to the office of Mace. There the
commissary informed her that she must consider herself under provisional
arrest. "But who," she asked indignantly, "is to look after my Georges?"
"His family," was the curt reply. The widow, walking up and down the
room like a panther, stormed and threatened. When she had in some
degree recovered herself, Mace asked her certain questions. Why had she
insisted on her lover going to the ball? She had done nothing of the
kind. How was it his assailant had got away so quickly by the open gate?
She did not know. What was the name and address of her reputed brother?
She was not going to deliver an honest father of a family into the
clutches of the police. What was the meaning of her visit to the
Charonne Cemetery? She went there to pray, not to keep assignations.
"And if you want to know," she exclaimed, "I have had typhoid
fever, which makes me often forget things. So I shall say nothing
more--nothing--nothing."
Taken before the examining magistrate, her attitude continued to
be defiant and arrogant. "Your cleverest policemen," she told the
magistrate, "will never find any evidence against me. Think well before
you send me to prison. I am not the woman to live long among thieves and
prostitutes." Before deciding finally whether the widow should be thrown
into such uncongenial society, the magistrate ordered Mace to search her
apartment in the Rue de Boulogne.
On entering the apartment the widow asked that all the windows should be
opened. "Let in the air," she said; "the police are coming in; they
make a nasty smell." She was invited to sit down while the officers
made their search. Her letters and papers were carefully examined;
they presented a strange mixture of order and disorder. Carefully kept
account books of her personal expenses were mixed up with billets
dous, paints and pomades, moneylenders' circulars, belladonna and
cantharides. But most astounding of all were the contents of the widows'
prie-Dieu. In this devotional article of furniture were stored all the
inmost secrets of her profligate career. Affectionate letters from the
elderly gentleman on whom she had imposed a supposititious child lay
side by side with a black-edged card, on which was written the last
message of a young lover who had killed himself on her account. "Jeanne,
in the flush of my youth I die because of you, but I forgive you.--M."
With these genuine outpourings of misplaced affection were mingled the
indecent verses of a more vulgar admirer, and little jars of hashish.
The widow, unmoved by this rude exposure of her way of life, only broke
her silence to ask Mace the current prices on the Stock Exchange.
One discovery, however, disturbed her equanimity. In the drawer of a
cupboard, hidden under some linen, Mace found a leather case containing
a sheaf of partially-burnt letters. As he was about to open it the widow
protested that it was the property of M. de Saint Pierre. Regardless of
her protest, Mace opened the case, and, looking through the letters, saw
that they were addressed to M. de Saint Pierre and were plainly of an
intimate character. "I found them on the floor near the stove in the
dining-room," said the widow, "and I kept them. I admit it was a wrong
thing to do, but Georges will forgive me when he knows why I did it."
From his better acquaintance with her character Mace surmised that
an action admitted by the widow to be "wrong" was in all probability
something worse. Without delay he took the prisoner back to his office,
and himself left for Courbevoie, there to enlighten, if possible, her
unhappy victim as to the real character of his enchantress.
The interview was a painful one. The lover refused to hear a word
against his mistress. "Jeanne is my Antigone," he said. "She has
lavished on me all her care, her tenderness, her love, and she believes
in God." Mace told him of her past, of the revelations contained in the
prie-Dieu of this true believer, but he could make no impression. "I
forgive her past, I accept her present, and please understand me, no one
has the power to separate me from her." It was only when Mace placed in
his hands the bundle of burnt letters, that he might feel what he could
not see, and read him some passages from them, that the unhappy man
realised the full extent of his mistress' treachery. Feeling himself
dangerously ill, dying perhaps, M. de Saint Pierre had told the widow to
bring from his rooms to the Rue de Boulogne the contents of his private
desk. It contained some letters compromising to a woman's honour. These
he was anxious to destroy before it was too late. As he went through the
papers, his eyes bandaged, he gave them to the widow to throw into the
stove. He could hear the fire burning and feel its warmth. He heard the
widow take up the tongs. He asked her why she did so. She answered that
it was to keep the burning papers inside the stove. Now from Mace he
learnt the real truth. She had used the tongs to take out some of the
letters half burnt, letters which in her possession might be one day
useful instruments for levying blackmail on her lover. "To blind me,"
exclaimed M. de Saint Pierre, "to torture me, and then profit by my
condition to lie to me, to betray me--it's infamous--infamous!" His
dream was shattered. Mace had succeeded in his task; the disenchantment
of M. de Saint Pierre was complete. That night the fastidious widow
joined the thieves and prostitutes in the St. Lazare Prison.
It was all very well to imprison the widow, but her participation in the
outrage on M. de Saint Pierre was by no means established.
The reputed brother, who had been in the habit of attending on her at
the Rue de Boulogne, still eluded the searches of the police. In silence
lay the widow's only hope of baffling her enemies. Unfortunately for the
widow, confinement told on her nerves. She became anxious, excited. Her
very ignorance of what was going on around her, her lover's silence
made her apprehensive; she began to fear the worst. At length--the widow
always had an itch for writing--she determined to communicate at all
costs with Gaudry and invoke his aid. She wrote appealing to him to
come forward and admit that he was the man the police were seeking, for
sheltering whom she had been thrown into prison. She drew a harrowing
picture of her sufferings in jail. She had refused food and been
forcibly fed; she would like to dash her head against the walls. If any
misfortune overtake Gaudry, she promises to adopt his son and leave him
a third of her property. She persuaded a fellow-prisoner; an Italian
dancer undergoing six months' imprisonment for theft, who was on the
point of being released, to take the letter and promise to deliver it to
Gaudry at Saint Denis. On her release the dancer told her lover of her
promise. He refused to allow her to mix herself up in such a case, and
destroyed the letter. Then the dancer blabbed to others, until her story
reached the ears of the police. Mace sent for her. At first she could
remember only that the name Nathalis occurred in the letter, but after
visiting accidentally the Cathedral at Saint Denis, she recollected that
this Nathalis lived there, and worked in an oil factory. It was easy
after this for the police to trace Gaudry. He was arrested. At his
house, letters from the widow were found, warning him not to come to her
apartment, and appointing to meet him in Charonne Cemetery. Gaudry made
a full confession. It was his passion for the widow, and a promise on
her part to marry him, which, he said, had induced him to perpetrate so
abominable a crime. He was sent to the Mazas Prison.
In the meantime the Widow Gras was getting more and more desperate.
Her complete ignorance tormented her. At last she gave up all hope, and
twice attempted suicide with powdered glass and verdigris. On May 12 the
examining magistrate confronted her with Gaudry. The man told his story,
the widow feigned surprise that the "friend of her childhood" should
malign her so cruelly. But to her desperate appeals Gaudry would only
reply, "It is too late!" They were sent for trial.
The trial of the widow and her accomplice opened before the Paris Assize
Court on July 23, 1877, and lasted three days. The widow was defended by
Lachaud, one of the greatest criminal advocates of France, the defender
of Madame Lafarge, La Pommerais, Troppmann, and Marshal Bazaine. M.
Demange (famous later for his defence of Dreyfus) appeared for Gaudry.
The case had aroused considerable interest. Among those present at the
trial were Halevy, the dramatist, and Mounet-Sully and Coquelin, from
the Comedie Francaise. Fernand Rodays thus described the widow in the
Figaro: "She looks more than her age, of moderate height, well made,
neither blatant nor ill at ease, with nothing of the air of a woman of
the town. Her hands are small. Her bust is flat, and her back round, her
hair quite white. Beneath her brows glitter two jet-black eyes--the eyes
of a tigress, that seem to breathe hatred and revenge."
Gaudry was interrogated first. Asked by the President the motive of
his crime, he answered, "I was mad for Madame Gras; I would have done
anything she told me. I had known her as a child, I had been brought
up with her. Then I saw her again. I loved her, I was mad for her, I
couldn't resist it. Her wish was law to me."
Asked if Gaudry had spoken the truth, the widow said that he lied. The
President asked what could be his motive for accusing her unjustly.
The widow was silent. Lachaud begged her to answer. "I cannot," she
faltered. The President invited her to sit down. After a pause the widow
seemed to recover her nerve.
President: Was Gaudry at your house while you were at the ball?
Widow: No, no! He daren't look me in the face and say so.
President: But he is looking at you now.
Widow: No, he daren't! (She fixes her eyes on Gaudry, who lowers his
head.)
President: I, whose duty it is to interrogate you, look you in the face
and repeat my question: Was Gaudry at your house at half-past ten that
night?
Widow: No.
President: You hear her, Gaudry?
Gaudry: Yes, Monsieur, but I was there.
Widow: It is absolutely impossible! Can anyone believe me guilty of such
a thing.
President: Woman Gras, you prefer to feign indignation and deny
everything. You have the right. I will read your examination before the
examining magistrate. I see M. Lachaud makes a gesture, but I must beg
the counsel for the defence not to impart unnecessary passion into these
proceedings.
Lachaud: My gesture was merely meant to express that the woman Gras
is on her trial, and that under the circumstances her indignation is
natural.
President: Very good.
The appearance in the witness box of the widow's unhappy victim
evoked sympathy. He gave his evidence quietly, without resentment or
indignation. As he told his story the widow, whose eyes were fixed on
him all the time, murmured: "Georges! Georges! Defend me! Defend me!" "I
state the facts," he replied.
The prisoners could only defend themselves by trying to throw on each
other the guilt of the crime. M. Demange represented Gaudry as acting
under the influence of his passion for the Widow Gras. Lachaud, on the
other hand, attributed the crime solely to Gaudry's jealousy of the
widow's lover, and contended that he was the sole author of the outrage.
The jury by their verdict assigned to the widow the greater share of
responsibility. She was found guilty in the full degree, but to Gaudry
were accorded extenuating circumstances. The widow was condemned
to fifteen years' penal servitude, her accomplice to five years'
imprisonment.
It is dreadful to think how very near the Widow Gras came to
accomplishing successfully her diabolical crime. A little less
percipitancy on her part, and she might have secured the fruits of
her cruelty. Her undoubted powers of fascination, in spite of the
fiendishness of her real character, are doubly proved by the devotion of
her lover and the guilt of her accomplice. At the same time, with that
strange contradiction inherent in human nature, the Jekyll and Hyde
elements which, in varying degree, are present in all men and women, the
Widow Gras had a genuine love for her young sister. Her hatred of men
was reasoned, deliberate, merciless and implacable. There is something
almost sadistic in the combination in her character of erotic sensibility
with extreme cruelty.
Vitalis and Marie Boyer
I found the story of this case in a brochure published in Paris as
one of a series of modern causes celebres. I have compared it with the
reports of the trial in the Gazette des Tribunaux.