The second drama which happened in Paris, and which was to have its denouement on the place de Grève, on the same day that the École des Vieillards was played, was the poisoning of Auguste Ballet.
We have spoken of the death of poor little Fleuriet, who was as pretty, fresh and flower-like as her name, and who was carried off in twenty-four hours without any apparent reason for her death. May I be forgiven the accusation implied in this statement, for it may be a calumny; but when the facts cited below are considered, the cause of her death may be guessed.
On 29 May, two young people arrived in what at that period was called "une petite voiture," and drew up at the Tête-Noire inn, at Saint-Cloud. They had set off without leaving word where they were going. Towards nine o'clock in the evening they were installed in a double-bedded chamber. One of the couple paid a deposit of five francs. The two friends walked about together the whole of the next day, Friday, the 30th; they only appeared at the hotel at dinner-time, and went out again immediately after their repast for another walk. It was nine o'clock at night before they returned for the second time. When going upstairs, one of them asked for a half-bottle of mulled wine, adding that it need not be sugared, as they had brought sugar with them. The wine was taken up a few minutes after nine, sugared with the sugar that they had brought, and made tasty with lemons bought in Saint-Cloud. The same young man who made the five francs deposit for the room, who ordered the dinner, and forbade the sugar to be brought upstairs, mixed the sugar and lemon juice in the bowl of warmed wine.
One of the two seemed to be a doctor; for, having heard that one of the servants of the house was ill, he went upstairs to see him, before tasting the prepared wine, and felt his pulse. However, he did not prescribe anything for him, and returned to his friend's room after an absence of a quarter of an hour. The said friend had found the wine very nasty, and had only drunk about a tablespoonful of it. He had stopped short because of the bitter flavour of the beverage. In the midst of all this, the chambermaid entered. "I must have put too much lemon in this wine," said the young man, holding the bowl towards her: "it is so bitter I cannot drink it." The servant tasted it; but she spat it out as soon as she had had a mouthful of it, exclaiming, "Oh yes!... rather, you have made it bitter!" Upon which she left the room. The two friends went to bed.
Throughout the night the young man who had tasted the wine was seized with violent spasms of nervous shivering, which did not give him a moment's rest; he complained to his companion several times that he could not keep himself still. Towards two o'clock, he had fits of colic and, at daybreak, about half-past three in the morning, he said he did not think he would be able to get up, that his feet were on fire and that he could not possibly put on his boots. The other young man said he would take a turn in the park, and recommended his friend to try and sleep in the meantime. But, instead of going for a walk in the park, the young man whose visit to the sick servant led people to suppose him a doctor, took a carriage, returned to Paris, bought twelve grains of acetate of morphine from M. Robin, rue de la Feuillade, and one drachm from M. Chevalier, another chemist, obtaining them readily in the capacity of a medical man. He returned to the inn of the Tête-Noire at eight o'clock, after four hours' absence, and asked for some cold milk for his friend. The sick man felt no better; he drank the cup of milk prepared by the young doctor, and almost immediately he was taken with fits of vomiting which rapidly succeeded each other. Soon he was seized by colic. Strange to say, in spite of the attack becoming worse, the doctor again left the patient alone, without leaving any instructions and without appearing to be uneasy at a condition of things which was arousing the anxiety of strangers. While he was absent, the hostess of the hotel and the chambermaid went up to the sick man and did what they could for him. He was in great agony. The young doctor returned in about half an hour's time. He found the patient in an alarming condition; he was asking for a doctor, insisting that one should be fetched from Saint-Cloud, and he opposed his friend's suggestion that one should be fetched from Paris. He felt so ill, he said, that he could not wait.
So they ran for the nearest available; but nevertheless it was not until eleven o'clock in the morning that the doctor whom they went to seek arrived. His name was M. Pigache.
The sick man was a little easier by that time. M. Pigache asked to see the evacuations, but he was told that they had been thrown away. He ordered emollients, but the emollients were not applied. He came back an hour later and prescribed a soothing draught. The young doctor administered it himself to the invalid; but the effect it produced was prompt and terrible: five minutes after, the patient was seized by frightful convulsions. In the midst of these convulsions he lost consciousness, and from that moment never regained it.
Towards eleven o'clock at night, the young doctor, weeping bitterly, informed a servant that his friend could not survive the night. The servant ran for M. Pigache, who decided, in spite of the short time he had attended him, to pay the dying man one more visit. He found the unhappy youth lying on his back, his neck rigidly strained, his head uncovered, hardly able to breathe; he could neither hear nor feel; his pulse was slow, his skin burning; his limbs were stiff and rigid, his mouth clenched; his whole body was running with a cold sweat and marked with bluish spots. M. Pigache decided he must at once bleed the patient freely, and he bled him twice—with leeches and with the lancet. It made the sick man a little easier. M. Pigache pointed this out to his young confrère, saying that the condition of the dying man was desperate and that, as the good effect produced by the two bleedings was so noticeable, he did not hesitate to propose a third. But this the young doctor opposed, saying that the responsibility was too great, and that, if the third bleeding ended badly, the whole of the responsibility for the ending would rest on M. Pigache. Upon this, the latter peremptorily demanded that a doctor should be sent for from Paris.
This course would have been quite easy, for, during that very day, as the result of a letter despatched by the young doctor couched in the following terms, "M. Ballet being ill at Saint-Cloud, Jean must come to him at once, in the gig, with the grey horse; neither he nor mother Buvet must speak a word of this to a single soul; if anybody makes inquiry, they must say he is going into the country by order of M. Ballet," Jean, who was a negro servant, arrived with the grey horse and the gig. In spite of this facility of communication, the young doctor made out that it was too late to send for a doctor from Paris. They waited, therefore, until three o'clock, and at three o'clock Jean started off with two letters from M. Pigache to two of his medical friends.
M. Pigache left the house, and as the young doctor accompanied him, he said, "Monsieur, I think no time should be lost in sending for the priest of Saint-Cloud; your friend is a Catholic and I think so badly of his condition that you ought to have the last sacraments administered to him without delay."