“I can understand a man being condemned to the torture if he is guilty,
but that in order to accomplish one’s mission as accuser, and to
discover a criminal, false witnesses who can give no evidence should be
brought a hundred leagues, that the rabble should be roused up, that
divers faces and imaginary names should be bestowed on an innocent man,
in order to turn a movement of surprise or an indignant gesture to his
disadvantage, all this is iniquitous, and goes beyond the right of
judgment bestowed upon men by God. I do not know this woman, and no
matter what she says or does, I shall say no more.”
Neither the skill nor threats of the police officer could shake this
resolution. It was to no purpose that the widow Masson repeated and
asseverated that she recognised him as her tenant Ducoudray, and that he
had had a large case of wine taken down into the cellar; Derues folded
his arms, and remained as motionless as if he had been blind and deaf.
The walls were sounded, the stones composing them carefully examined,
the floor pierced in several places, but nothing unusual was discovered.
Would they have to give it up? Already the officer was making signs to
this effect, when the man who had remained at first below with Monsieur
de Lamotte, and who, standing in shadow, had carefully watched Derues
when he was brought down, came forward, and pointing to the recess under
the stairs, said—
“Examine this corner. The prisoner glanced involuntarily in this
direction when he came down; I have watched him, and it is the only sign
he has given. I was the only person who could see him, and he did not
see me. He is very clever, but one can’t be for ever on one’s guard, and
may the devil take me if I haven’t scented the hiding-place.”
“Wretch!” said Derues to himself, “then you have had your hand on me for
a whole hour, and amused yourself by prolonging my agony! Oh! I ought to
have known it; I have found my master. Never mind, you shall learn
nothing from my face, nor yet from the decaying body you will find;
worms and poison can only have left an unrecognisable corpse.”
An iron rod sunk into the ground, encountered a hard substance some four
feet below. Two men set to work, and dug with energy. Every eye was
fixed upon this trench increasing in depth with every shovelful of earth
which the two labourers cast aside. Monsieur de Lamotte was nearly
fainting, and his emotion impressed everyone except Derues. At length
the silence was broken by the spades striking heavily on wood, and the
noise made everyone shudder. The chest was uncovered and hoisted out of
the trench; it was opened, and the body of a woman was seen, clad only
in a chemise, with a red and white headband, face downwards. The body
was turned over, and Monsieur de Lamotte recognised his wife, not yet
disfigured.
The feeling of horror was so great that no one spoke or uttered a sound.
Derues, occupied in considering the few chances which remained to him,
had not observed that, by the officer’s order, one of the guards had
left the cellar before the men began to dig. Everybody had drawn back
both from the corpse and the murderer, who alone had not moved, and who
was repeating prayers. The flame of the torches placed on the ground
cast a reddish light on this silent and terrible scene.
Derues started and turned round on hearing a terrified cry behind him.
His wife had just been brought to the cellar. The commissioner seized
her with one hand, and taking a torch in the other, compelled her to
look down on the body.
“It is Madame de Lamotte!” she exclaimed.
“Yes, yes,” she answered, overwhelmed with terror,—“yes, I recognise
her!”
Unable to support the sight any longer, she grew pale and fainted away.
She and her husband were removed separately. One would have supposed the
discovery was already known outside, for the people showered curses and
cries of “Assassin!” and “Poisoner!” on the carriage which conveyed
Derues. He remained silent during the drive, but before re-entering his
dungeon, he said—
“I must have been mad when I sought to hide the death and burial of
Madame de Lamotte from public knowledge. It is the only sin I have
committed, and, innocent of aught else, I resign myself as a Christian
to the judgment of God.”
It was the only line of defence which remained open to him, and he clung
to it, with the hope of imposing on the magistrates by redoubled
hypocrisy and pious observances. But all this laboriously constructed
scaffolding of lies was shaken to its base and fell away piece by piece.
Every moment brought fresh and overwhelming revelations. He professed
that Madame de Lamotte had died suddenly in his house, and that, fearing
suspicion, he had buried her secretly. But the doctors called on to
examine the body declared that she had been poisoned with corrosive
sublimate and opium. The pretended payment was clearly an odious
imposture, the receipt a forgery! Then, like a threatening spectre,
arose another question, to which he found no reply, and his own
invention turned against him.
Why, knowing his mother was no more, had he taken young de Lamotte to
Versailles? What had become of the youth? What had befallen, him? Once
on the track, the cooper with whom he had lodged on the 12th of February
was soon discovered, and an Act of Parliament ordered the exhumation of
the corpse buried under the name of Beaupre, which the cooper identified
by a shirt which he had given for the burial. Derues, confounded by the
evidence, asserted that the youth died of indigestion and venereal
disease. But the doctors again declared the presence of corrosive
sublimate and opium. All this evidence of guilt he met with assumed
resignation, lamenting incessantly for Edouard, whom he declared he had
loved as his own son. “Alas!” he said, “I see that poor boy every night!
But it softens my grief to know that he was not deprived of the last
consolations of religion! God, who sees me, and who knows my innocence,
will enlighten the magistrates, and my honour will be vindicated.”
The evidence being complete, Derues was condemned by sentence of the
Chatelet, pronounced April 30th, and confirmed by Parliament, May 5th.
We give the decree as it is found in the archives:
“This Court having considered the trial held before the Provost of
Paris, or his Deputy-Lieutenant at the Chatelet, for the satisfaction of
the aforesaid Deputy at the aforesaid Chatelet, at the request of the
Deputy of the King’s Attorney General at the aforesaid Court, summoner
and plaintiff, against Antoine-Francois Derues, and Marie-Louise
Nicolais, his wife, defendants and accused, prisoners in the prisons of
the Conciergerie of the Palace at Paris, who have appealed from the
sentence given at the aforesaid trial, the thirtieth day of April 1777,
by which the aforesaid Antoine-Francois Derues has been declared duly
attainted and convicted of attempting unlawfully to appropriate without
payment, the estate of Buissony Souef, belonging to the Sieur and Dame
de Saint Faust de Lamotte, from whom he had bought the said estate by
private contract on the twenty-second day of December 1775, and also of
having unworthily abused the hospitality shown by him since the
sixteenth day of December last towards the aforesaid Dame de Lamotte,
who arrived in Paris on the aforesaid day in order to conclude with him
the bargain agreed on in December 1775, and who, for this purpose, and
at his request, lodged with her son in the house of the said Derues, who
of premeditated design poisoned the said Dame de Lamotte, whether by a
medicine composed and prepared by him on the thirtieth day of January
last, or by the beverages and drinks administered by him after the
aforesaid medicine (he having taken the precaution to send his servant
into the country for two or three days), and to keep away strangers from
the room where the said Dame de Lamotte was lying), from the effects of
which poison the said Dame de Lamotte died on the night of the said
thirty-first day of January last; also of having kept her demise secret,
and of having himself enclosed in a chest the body of the said Dame de
Lamotte, which he then caused to be secretly transported to a cellar in
the rue de la Mortellerie hired by him for this purpose, under the
assumed name of Ducoudray, wherein he buried it himself, or caused it to
be buried; also of having persuaded the son of the above Dame de Lamotte
(who, with his mother, had lodged in his house from the time of their
arrival in Paris until the fifteenth day of January, last,—and who had
then been placed in a school that the aforesaid Dame de Lamotte was at
Versailles and desired him to join her there, and, under this pretence,
of having conducted the said younger Sieur de Lamotte, the twelfth day
of February (after having given him some chocolate), to the aforesaid
town of Versailles, to a lodging hired at a cooper’s, and of having
there wilfully poisoned him, either in the chocolate taken by the said
younger Sieur de Lamotte before starting, or in beverages and
medicaments which the said Derues himself prepared, mixed, and
administered to the aforesaid Sieur de Lamotte the younger, during the
eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth days of February last,
having kept him lying ill in the aforesaid hired room, and having
refused to call in physicians or surgeons, notwithstanding the progress
of the malady, and the representations made to him on the subject,
saying that he himself was a physician and surgeon; from which poison
the said Sieur de Lamotte the younger died on the fifteenth day of
February last, at nine o’clock in the evening, in the arms of the
aforesaid Derues, who, affecting the deepest grief, and shedding tears,
actually exhorted the aforesaid Sieur de Lamotte to confession, and
repeated the prayers for the dying; after which he himself laid out the
body for burial, saying that the deceased had begged him to do so, and
telling the people of the house that he had died of venereal disease;
also of having caused him to be buried the next day in the churchyard of
the parish church of Saint Louis at the aforesaid Versailles, and of
having entered the deceased in the register of the said parish under a
false birthplace, and the false name of Beaupre, which name the said
Derues had himself assumed on arriving at the said lodging, and had
given to the said Sieur de Lamotte the younger, whom he declared to be
his nephew. Also, to cover these atrocities, and in order to appropriate
to himself the aforesaid estate of Buisson-Souef, he is convicted of
having calumniated the aforesaid Dame de Lamotte, and of having used
various manoeuvres and practised several deceptions, to wit—
“First, in signing, or causing to be signed, the names of the above Dame
de Lamotte to a deed of private contract between the said Derues and his
wife on one side and the aforesaid Dame de Lamotte by right of a power
of attorney given by her husband on the other (the which deed is dated
the twelfth day of February, and was therefore written after the decease
of the said Dame de Lamotte); by which deed the said Dame de Lamotte
appears to change the previous conventions agreed on in the first deed
of the twenty-second of December in the year 1775, and acknowledges
receipt from the said Derues of a sum of one hundred thousand livres, as
being the price of the estate of Buisson;
“Secondly, in signing before a notary, the ninth day of February last, a
feigned acknowledgment for a third part of a hundred thousand livres, in
order to give credence to the pretended payment made by him;
“Thirdly, in announcing and publishing, and attesting even by oath at
the time of an examination before the commissioner Mutel, that he had
really paid in cash to the aforesaid Dame de Lamotte the aforesaid
hundred thousand livres, and that she, being provided with this money,
had fled with her son and a certain person unknown;
“Fourthly, in depositing with a notary the deed of private contract
bearing the pretended receipt for the above sum of one hundred thousand
livres, end pursuing at law the execution of this deed and of his claim
to the possession of the said estate;
“Fifthly, in signing or causing to be signed by another person, before
the notaries of the town of Lyons, whither he had gone for this purpose,
a deed dated the twelfth day of March, by which the supposed Dame de
Lamotte appeared to accept the payment of the hundred thousand livres,
and to give authority to the Sieur de Lamotte, her husband, to receive
the arrears of the remainder of the price of the said estate, the which
deed he produced as a proof of the existence of the said Dame de
Lamotte;
“Sixthly, in causing to be sent, by other hands, under the name of the
aforesaid Dame de Lamotte, to a lawyer, on the eighth day o f April 1777
(at a time when he was in prison, and had been compelled to abandon the
fable that he had paid the aforesaid sum of one hundred thousand livres
in hard cash, and had substituted a pretended payment made in notes),
the notes pretended to have been given by him in payment to the said
Dame de Lamotte;
“Seventh, and finally, in maintaining constantly, until the discovery of
the body of the aforesaid Dame de Lamotte, that the said Dame was still
alive, and that he had seen her at the town of Lyons, as has been stated
above.
“In atonement has been condemned, etc. etc. etc.
“His goods are hereby declared acquired and confiscated to the King, or
to whomsoever His Majesty shall appoint, first deducting the sum of two
hundred livres as fine for the King, in case the confiscation is not to
the sole profit of His Majesty; and also the sum of six hundred livres
for masses to be said for the repose of the souls of the aforesaid Dame
de Lamotte and her son. And, before being executed, the said
Antoine-Francois Derues shall suffer the question ordinary and
extraordinary, in order that from his mouth may be learned the truth of
these facts, and also the names of his accomplices. And the decision of
the judges in the proceedings with regard to the above-mentioned
Marie-Louise Nicolais, wife of Derues, is delayed until after the
execution of the above sentence. It is also decreed that the mortuary
act of the aforesaid de Lamotte the younger, dated the sixteenth day of
February last, in the register of deaths belonging to the parish church
of Saint-Louis at Versailles, be amended, and his correct names be
substituted, in order that the said Sieur de Lamotte, the father, and
other persons interested, may produce said names before the magistrates
if required. And it is also decreed that this sentence be printed and
published by the deputy of the Attorney-General at the Chatelet, and
affixed to the walls in the usual places and cross roads of the town,
provostship and viscounty of Paris, and wherever else requisite.
“With regard to the petition of Pierre-Etienne de Saint-Faust de
Lamotte, a Royal Equerry, Sieur de Grange-Flandre, Buisson-Souef,
Valperfond, and other places, widower and inheritor of Marie Francois
Perier, his wife, according to their marriage contract signed before
Baron and partner, notaries at Paris, the fifth day of September 1762,
whereby he desires to intervene in the action brought against Derues and
his accomplices, concerning the assassination and poisoning committed on
the persons of the wife and son of the said Sieur de Saint-Faust de
Lamotte, on the accusation made by him to the Deputy Attorney-General of
the King at the Chatelet at present pending in the Court, on the report
of the final judgment given in the said action the 30th of April last,
and which allowed the intervention; it is decreed that there shall be
levied on the goods left by the condemned, before the rights of the
Treasury, and separate from them, the sum of six thousand livres, or
such other sum as it shall please the Court to award; from which sum the
said Saint-Faust de Lamotte shall consent to deduct the sum of two
thousand seven hundred and forty-eight livres, which he acknowledges has
been sent or remitted to him by the said Derues and his wife at
different times; which first sum of six thousand livres, or such other,
shall be employed by the said Sieur de Saint-Faust de Lamotte, who is
authorised to found therewith, in the parish church of Saint Nicholas de
Villeneuve-le-Roy, in which parish the estate of Buisson-Souef is
situate, and which is mentioned in the action, an annual and perpetual
service for the repose of the souls of the wife and son of the said
Sieur de Saint-Faust de Lamotte, of which an act shall be inserted in
the decree of intervention, and a copy of this act or decree shall be
inscribed upon a stone which shall be set in the wall of the said church
of Saint Nicholas de Villeneuve-le-Roy, in such place as is expedient.
And the deed of contract for private sale, made between the late spouse
of the said Sieur de Saint-Faust de Lamotte and the above-named Derues
and his wife, is hereby declared null and void, as having had no value
in absence of any payment or realisation of contract before a notary;
and the pretended agreement of the twelfth day of February last, as also
all other deeds fabricated by the said Derues or others, named in the
above action, as also any which may hereafter be presented, are hereby
declared to be null and void.
“The Court declares the judgment pronounced by the magistrates of the
Chatelet against the above named Derues to be good and right, and his
appeal against the same to be bad and ill-founded.
“It is decreed that the sentence shall lose its full and entire effect
with regard to Marie-Louise Nicolais, who is condemned to the ordinary
fine of twelve livres. The necessary relief granted on the petition of
Pierre-Etienne de Saint-Faust de Lamotte, the second day of May this
present month, and delay accorded until after the suspended judgment
pronounced with regard to the said Marie-Louise Nicolais.
“(Signed) De Gourgues, President.
“OUTREMONT, Councillor.”
Derues’ assurance and calmness never deserted him for one moment. For
three-quarters of an hour he harangued the Parliament, and his defence
was remarkable both for its presence of mind and the art with which he
made the most of any circumstances likely to suggest doubts to the
magistrates and soften the severity of the first sentence. Found guilty
on every point, he yet protested that he was innocent of poisoning.
Remorse, which often merely means fear of punishment, had no place in
his soul, and torture he seemed not to dread. As strong in will as he
was weak in body, he desired to die like a martyr in the faith of his
religion, which was hypocrisy, and the God whom he gloried on the
scaffold was the god of lies.
On May 6th, at seven in the morning, the sentence of execution was read
to him. He listened calmly, and when it was finished, remarked:
“I had not anticipated so severe a sentence.”
A few hours later the instruments of torture were got ready. He was told
that this part of his punishment would be remitted if he would confess
his crimes and the names of his accomplices. He replied:
“I have no more to say. I know what terrible torture awaits me, I know I
must die to-day, but I have nothing to confess.”
He made no resistance when his knees and legs were bound, and endured
the torture courageously. Only, in a moment of agony, he exclaimed:
“Accursed money! has thou reduced me to this?”
Thinking that pain would overcome his resolution, the presiding
magistrate bent towards him, and said:
“Unhappy man! confess thy crime, since death is near at hand.”
He recovered his firmness, and, looking at the magistrate, replied:
“I know it, monseigneur; I have perhaps not three hours to live.”
Thinking that his apparently feeble frame could not endure the last
wedges, the executioner was ordered to stop. He was unbound and laid on
a mattress, and a glass of wine was brought, of which he only drank a
few drops; after this, he made his confession to the priest. For,
dinner, they brought him soup and stew, which he ate eagerly, and
inquiring of the gaoler if he could have something more, an entree was
brought in addition. One might have thought that this final repast
heralded, not death but deliverance. At length three o’clock struck the
hour appointed for leaving the prison.
According to the report of credible persons whom we have consulted,
Paris on this occasion presented a remarkable appearance, which those
who saw it were never able to forget. The great anthill was troubled to
its very lowest depth. Whether by accident or design, the same day had
been fixed for a function which ought to have proved a considerable
counter attraction. A great festival in honour of a German prince was
given on the Plaine de Grenelle, at which all the court was present; and
probably more than one great lady regretted missing the emotions of the
Place de Greve, abandoned to the rabble and the bourgeoisie. The rest of
the city was deserted, the streets silent, the houses closed. A stranger
transported suddenly into such a solitude might have reasonably thought
that during the night the town had been smitten by the Angel of Death,
and that only a labyrinth of vacant buildings remained, testifying to
the life and turmoil of the preceding day. A dark and dense atmosphere
hung over the abandoned town; lightning furrowed the heavy motionless
clouds; in the distance the occasional rumble of thunder was heard,
answered by the cannon of the royal fete. The crowd was divided between
the powers of heaven and earth: the terrible majesty of the Eternal on
one side, on the other the frivolous pomp of royalty—eternal punishment
and transient grandeur in opposition. Like the waters of a flood leaving
dry the fields which they have covered, so the waves of the multitude
forsook their usual course. Thousands of men and women crowded together
along the route which the death-cart would take; an ocean of heads
undulated like the ears in a wheatfield. The old houses, hired at high
rates, quivered under the weight of eager spectators, and the window
sashes had been removed to afford a better view.
Attired in the shirt worn by condemned criminals, and bearing a placard
both in front and behind, with the words “Wilful Poisoner,” Derues
descended the great staircase of the Chatelet with a firm step. It was
at this moment, on seeing the crucifix, that he exclaimed, “O Christ, I
shall suffer like Thee!” He mounted the tumbril, looking right and left
amongst the crowd. During the progress he recognised and bowed to
several of his old associates, and bade adieu in a clear voice to the
former mistress of his ‘prentice days, who has recorded that she never
saw him look so pleasant. Arrived at the door of Notre Dame, where the
clerk was awaiting him, he descended from the tumbril without
assistance, took a lighted wax taper weighing two pounds in his hand,
and did penance, kneeling, bareheaded and barefooted, a rope round his
neck, repeating the words of the death-warrant. He then reascended the
cart in the midst of the cries and execrations of the populace, to which
he appeared quite insensible. One voice only, endeavouring to dominate
the tumult, caused him to turn his head: it was that of the hawker who
was crying his sentence, and who broke off now and then to say—
“Well! my poor gossip Derues, how do you like that fine carriage you’re
in? Oh yes, mutter your prayers and look up to heaven as much as you
like, you won’t take us in now. Ah! thief who said I stole from you!
Wasn’t I right when I said I should be selling your sentence some day?”
Then, adding her own wrongs to the list of crimes, she declared that the
Parliament had condemned him as much for having falsely accused her of
theft as for having poisoned Madame de Lamotte and her son!
When arrived at the scaffold, he gazed around him, and a sort of shiver
of impatience ran through the crowd. He smiled, and as if anxious to
trick mankind for the last time, asked to be taken to the Hotel de
Ville, which was granted, in the hope that he would at last make some
confession; but he only persisted in saying that he was guiltless of
poisoning. He had an interview with his wife, who nearly fainted on
seeing him, and remained for more than a quarter of an hour unable to
say a word. He lavished tender names upon her, and professed much
affliction at seeing her in so miserable a condition.
When she was taken away, he asked permission to embrace her, and took a
most touching farewell. His last words have been preserved.
“My dear wife,” he said, “I recommend our beloved children to your care:
bring them up in the fear of God. You must go to Chartres, you will
there see the bishop, on whom I had the honour of waiting when I was
there last, and who has always been kind to me; I believe he has thought
well of me, and that I may hope he will take pity on you and on our
children.”
It was now seven in the evening, and the crowd began to murmur at the
long delay. At length the criminal reappeared. An onlooker who saw him
go to the Hotel de Ville, and who was carried by the movement of the
crowd to the foot of the scaffold, says that when handed over to the
executioner he took off his clothes himself. He kissed the instrument of
punishment with devotion, then extended himself on the St. Andrew’s
cross, asking with a resigned smile that they would make his sufferings
as short as possible. As soon as his head was covered, the executioner
gave the signal. One would have thought a very few blows would have
finished so frail a being, but he seemed as hard to kill as the venomous
reptiles which must be crushed and cut to pieces before life is extinct,
and the coup de grace was found necessary. The executioner uncovered his
head and showed the confessor that the eyes were closed and that the
heart had ceased to beat. The body was then removed from the cross, the
hands and feet fastened together, and it was thrown on the funeral pile.
While the execution was proceeding the people applauded. On the morrow
they bought up the fragments of bone, and hastened to buy lottery
tickets, in the firm conviction that these precious relics would bring
luck to the fortunate possessors!
In 1777, Madame Derues was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment, and
confined at the Salpetriere. She was one of the first victims who
perished in the prison massacres.
――――