Frederick Benoit was duly convicted, sentenced to death and executed. It came out in the course of the trial that his mother had had a strong presentiment of impending evil. On the night of the murder, when her husband was absent, she carefully inspected the house with her son, the intending parricide, and made all secure. “The nights are long (it was the month of November); we never know what might happen,” she said, closing all doors and shutters, and looking to the locks and fastenings. She could not protect herself from the danger already within the house. Her murderer was in a room close by, and he accomplished his purpose with a single blow, while she still slept, and passed, without a struggle, instantaneously from life to death.
M. Donon Cadot, a prosperous banker of Pontoise, was found murdered in his offices on January 15, 1844; and suspicion fell upon his second son, who lived with him. He was a widower. His household was limited to one general servant, and his economy was so rigid that he passed for a miser. No doubt he was very illiberal to his son. On the day named, one for the settlement of bills and notes of hand, the banker was at his desk by 9 o’clock, ready to meet his engagements, and transacted business for a time, but at the half hour the doors were found closed, and the son, answering for his father, declared that he had been called away for a time. He had not returned by four in the afternoon, and the son on the premises, Edward, summoned an elder brother, who lived in the town, to attend to the business of the bank. Together they found a sluggish stream of mingled blood and ink, flowing under the office door. Forcing it they discovered the lifeless corpse of their father within. He had been battered to death by some heavy instrument.
The motive of the crime was revealed by the forced safe and empty drawers of the desk. Everything of value, bills, bank-notes, cash and a quantity of plate had been carried off. The first named, many hundred in number, and amounting in all to some 300,000 francs, being unnegotiable, were returned by post. Other bills, however, were presented, and the bearer of one of them was traced to his home, where a number of the papers were found in the same handwriting as the envelopes which had come through the post. This fixed the suspicion on a man named Rousselot, and he was brought to confess that he had participated in the crime. He had committed it at the instigation of the son Edward, who was moved by greed and jealousy. A long trial followed, resulting in the conviction of Rousselot and a sentence of life at the galleys, but the evidence was not deemed conclusive against the son, and he was released.
A common feature in French crime has always been the systematic organisation of offenders in bands, where a number of them contrive to act in concert under chosen leaders. There have been many of these associations from time to time working on a wide scale and doing enormous damage. The chauffeurs, so called from their methods of torture to extort confessions of hidden wealth, were a product of the revolutionary epoch, and a revival of the baneful bands, that have constantly ravaged France from the Middle Ages. The extensive operations of Cartouche, one of the most daring and successful of thieves on a large scale, were rivalled by the terrible band directed by Hulin in the forest of Montargis, and the exploits of Pontailler, who worked close up to the walls of Paris.
The depredations of a number of the worst criminals spread terror through the capital in 1836 and the years immediately following. Now again, as when Vidocq was charged with pursuit and discovery, serious robberies were of constant occurrence, and were rightly attributed to associated action. Very many ex-convicts, those regularly released, and yet more who had made their escape from durance, were at large. Some five or six thousand infested Paris alone. The police were ever on the alert, but failed to put their hands upon the ringleader, until all at once an atrocious murder was committed in broad daylight in the populous quarter of the Temple.
Among the respectable dealers of that neighborhood was a family named Renaud, father, mother and daughter, who kept a shop for the sale of mattresses and bedding. One afternoon in June, Renaud meant to take his wife and daughter for a walk, and sent the girl to their private residence, hard by, to help her mother to dress. She found the rooms securely locked, and, thinking her mother was within, asleep, went down to ask her father if she should be awakened. On her return she met a man coming down in a hurry, and a second, following. But still her mother’s door was closed. Still no answer came to her knocking, and she again sought her father, who now ascended and broke into the room with a hatchet. Madame Renaud was lying dead upon the floor, bearing many wounds. It was subsequently found that a bag of gold had been abstracted from the room, a quantity of silver money and several pieces of plate. Beyond question the strange men first seen were the authors of the crime. As the men reached the street a woman had met them, and heard a sound of silver rattling down on the pavement. Some one also cried after them: “Here! You’ve dropped a silver spoon;” and the smaller of the two paused to pick it up and run on. Others noted them as they passed, and that their clothes were much stained with blood. But they went on, and entered a café, where they called for two glasses of sugared water. Their haggard looks attracted attention, and they were seen using the water bottle to wash their hands below the table. Evidently disturbed, and dreading further observation, they got up and hurriedly left the café.
The description given of these two men fitted with that of a couple of convicts recently released from Toulon. Search was made for them, and, as it progressed, the police came upon several confederates, all members of a gang in which these two, by name Soufflard and Le Sage, were leading spirits. With a third, called Micaud, they formed the executive of this criminal association. They had all been at Toulon together, and were known there as the most violent and intractable prisoners. When a new act of insubordination was planned, a new series of thefts, this trio always originated or were concerned in it. Le Sage in particular was a terror to his keepers. He had a sister of the same type as himself, a half savage peasant woman, who hawked bread about in a basket, but whose real occupation was that of spy, who hunted out jobs for execution, promising great profit to those who could bring them off. She had trained a small son to assist her, a precocious child, who was an adroit thief on his own account. Inspired and guided by these chiefs, a number of lesser practitioners were kept constantly busy. Crimes multiplied throughout Paris; jewellers’ shops were broken into, and private apartments by force or with false keys; shops were explored by pretended purchasers of goods, and their weak points laid bare and a descent made next night.
Le Sage, who had been locked up for a brief space in La Force, was, on his release, informed by his sister of the chances offered by the Renaud establishment in the Temple. He saw at once that robbery could hardly be effected without violence, which he did not shrink from, but he wanted a stalwart companion. Soufflard, who was also at large, was thirsting for some “big thing,” and willingly joined in the attack upon the Renauds. The crime once committed, the police were soon on the track of the murderers, guided by the indications of false friends. Le Sage was taken first, and easily identified. Soufflard, who had three separate domiciles, and was very wary, was only caught through the help of a jealous comrade, who denounced him. Trial and conviction rapidly followed, but Soufflard after the sentence, evading the supervision of the warders, who were removing him to the Conciergerie, swallowed a quantity of arsenic, and died of the effects. Le Sage also committed suicide by hanging himself in his cell.
Crime is of no class, and in all countries and in all ages, high born offenders, as well as low, have stood in the dock to answer for their misdeeds. There are two cases about this period that may be quoted here in proof of this particular statement; one the alleged poisoning of her husband by Madame Lafarge; the other, the horrible murder of the Duchesse de Choiseul-Praslin by her husband, the Duke, at their mansion, the Hotel Sebastiani in the Faubourg St. Honoré, Paris. Both take rank with the most celebrated cases, and attracted extraordinary interest, which has but little abated even now.
The case of Madame Lafarge is still an unsolved mystery. Grave doubts as to her guilt prevailed, and many learned lawyers have maintained that she was the victim of judicial error. The accused, Marie Fortunée Cappelle, was a young lady in good society, well educated and well bred, who had married a manufacturer at Glandier in the Limoges country, not far from Bordeaux. She was the daughter of a colonel in Napoleon’s Artillery of the Guard. She was well connected. Her aunts were well married, one to a Prussian diplomatist, the other to Monsieur Garat, the General Secretary of the Bank of France. Her father had stood well with Napoleon, had held several important military commands, and was intimate with many of the nobles of the First Empire. Marie lost her parents early, and, being possessed of a certain fortune, a marriage was sought for her in the usual French way. She was not exactly pretty, but was distinguished looking, with a slim, graceful figure, a dead white complexion, jet black eyes and a sweet, sad smile.