The husband chosen was a certain Charles Pouch Lafarge, a man of fair position, but decidedly the inferior of Marie Cappelle. He was in business as an iron master, and was deemed prosperous. He said he had a large private residence in the neighborhood of his works, a fine mansion, situated in a wide park, where his wife would be in the midst of agreeable and fashionable society. Great, almost indecent, haste was shown in arranging and solemnising the marriage. Within five days the bride started for her new home, and quickly realised that she had been completely befooled. M. Lafarge at once showed himself in his true colors as a rough, brutal creature, who treated his wife badly from the first. The family seat at Glandier was a fraud. It was a damp, dark house in a street, surrounded with smoky chimneys. The park did not exist, nor did the pleasant neighbors. She had been grossly deceived, and the reality was even worse than it appeared, for Lafarge was in serious financial difficulties, and had been obliged to issue forged bills of exchange to keep his head above water. The unhappy and disappointed wife, when face to face with the truth, made a determined effort to break loose from Lafarge. On the very day of her arrival at Glandier, she shut herself up in her room, and wrote him an indignant yet appealing letter, in which she threatened, if he would not let her go, to take arsenic. And this, her first mention of the lethal drug, was remembered against her in later days, when she was tried for her life.
Peace was patched up between the ill-assorted couple, and Marie was persuaded to withdraw her letter and promise to do her best to accept the position, and make her husband happy. “With a little strength of mind,” she wrote to an uncle, “with patience and my husband’s love, I may grow contented. Charles adores me, and I cannot but be touched by the caresses he lavishes on me.” He must have been willing enough to secure her good graces, for he wanted her to part with her fortune to improve his business. He had discovered a new process in iron-smelting, which promised to be profitable, and his wife lent him money to develop the invention. Then he hurried to Paris to secure the patent, and while absent from Glandier, where his wife remained, the first event occurred on which the suspicion of foul play was based. Madame Lafarge was now so affectionately disposed that she desired to send her portrait to her husband. The picture was to be accompanied by a number of small cakes prepared by the mother-in-law, and Marie Lafarge wrote to beg her husband to eat one at a particular hour on a particular day. She would do the same at Glandier, and thereby set up some mysterious rapport with her husband. When the parcel arrived, the picture was found within, but no small cakes, only one large one. The box had been tampered with. When it left Glandier, it was screwed down. It reached Paris fastened with long nails. Lafarge, on opening it, broke off a part of the large cake, and ate it. That night he was taken violently ill. The cake presumably contained poison, but the fact was never proved, still less that Marie Lafarge had inserted the arsenic, which it was supposed to contain. The evidence against her was that she had bought some of this baneful drug from a chemist at Glandier. The charge was definitely made, but on weak evidence, the chief being the purchased arsenic and her manifest agitation when the news came from Paris that her husband had been taken ill. On the other hand, there was nothing to show that she had substituted the large poisoned cake for the small ones, or that no one else had handled the parcel. Here crept in the notion of another agency, and the suggestion that some one else might have been anxious to poison Lafarge. This idea was by no means extravagant, and it cropped up more than once during the proceedings, but no proper attention was paid to it. Had the clue been followed, it might have led inquiry to the possible guilt of another person.
Lafarge returned from Paris a good deal shaken, but the doctor promised that with rest his health would be restored. On the contrary it got worse, and with symptoms which to-day would undoubtedly be attributed to arsenical poisoning. Marie Lafarge would have constituted herself sole nurse, but the mother-in-law would not agree, and would never leave her alone with her husband. Witnesses deposed to having seen Marie take a white powder from a cupboard, which she mixed with the chicken broth and medicine given to Lafarge. Another witness declared that the patient cried out “that his medicine burnt out like fire.”
All this time Marie Lafarge did not conceal her possession of arsenic. She bought it openly to kill rats, she said: a very hackneyed excuse. It had been bought through one of Lafarge’s clerks, Denis Barbier by name, upon whom rested strong suspicion from first to last. Barbier was a man of bad character, passing under a false name. He had been the secret accomplice of Lafarge in passing forged bills, and a shrewd theory was advanced that all along he was scheming to supplant his master and take possession of his property after he (Lafarge) had been made away with. Barbier’s conduct was such that the Prussian jurists who investigated the trial afterwards declared that they would have accused him of the crime rather than Madame Lafarge.
The trial was no doubt conducted with gross carelessness. A post-mortem was made, but not until it was insisted upon, and it was very imperfectly performed. When at length the corpse was disinterred, only an infinitesimal quantity of arsenic was at first found in the remains, but when the most eminent scientists of the day were called in, it was established by M. Orfila that the deceased had been poisoned. The circumstances of the case fixed the guilt upon Madame Lafarge. She was very ably defended by the famous Maitre Lachaud, but the jury had no doubt, and condemned her by a majority of voices. At the same time she was given the benefit of extenuating circumstances, and sentenced to travaux forcés for life, with exposure in the public square of Tulle. This decision, although supported by science, was not universally approved. Many believed in her innocence to the last, and the number of her sympathisers was legion. She endured her imprisonment at Montpelier, where she remained for many years, engaged almost continually in literary work. Her “Memoirs” and a work entitled “Prison Hours” were largely read. She also conducted an enormous correspondence, for she was permitted to receive and send out an unlimited number of letters. No less than six thousand passed through her hands. At length in 1852 she petitioned the head of the State, and was released with a full pardon by Napoleon III.
It is impossible at this length of time to settle a question so keenly debated by her contemporaries. The possibility of her having served for another’s crime hardly rests on any very strong basis, and the circumstances that led to her arraignment were very much against her. It must not be forgotten, moreover, that she was charged with a crime other than that of theft, and was convicted of it. In this again she may have suffered unjustly. A school friend, who had become the wife of the Vicomte de Leautaud, accused her of having stolen her diamonds, when on a visit at her house. Marie Lafarge freely admitted the diamonds were in her possession, and pointed out where they might be found at Glandier, but she refuted the accusation of theft, and declared that the Vicomtesse had entrusted the diamonds to her to be sold. Her former lover threatened blackmail, and Madame de Leautaud was driven to buy him off—this was Marie’s explanation, which Madame de Leautaud repelled by declaring that it was Marie Lafarge who was threatened, and that the diamonds were to be sacrificed to save her good name. In the end, the case was tried in open court, and Madame Lafarge was found guilty, although there were many contradictory facts. It was strange that the Vicomtesse so long refrained from complaining of the theft, and made so little of the loss. Marie, on the other hand, scarcely secreted the jewels, and was known to have a number of fine loose stones, for which she variously accounted—one story being that they were a gift, another that she had owned them from childhood. A sentence of two years’ imprisonment was passed upon Madame Lafarge, but it merged in the larger term, when she was convicted of having poisoned her husband.
The murder of the Duchesse de Choiseul-Praslin by the husband shocked all Europe, not only on account of the horrible details of the deed, but from the high rank of the parties concerned. The Duke held his head high as the representative of an ancient family, and his unhappy victim was one of the leaders of French fashionable society. She was the daughter of one of the first Napoleon’s famous generals, the Count Sebastian, and when in Paris they resided at the Sebastian Hotel in the Faubourg St. Honoré, in the Champs Elysées. In August, 1840, the family came from their country seat, the magnificent Chateau of Vaux, constructed by the famous Fouquet, Louis XIV’s finance minister, who fell into such irretrievable disgrace, and died after long years of close imprisonment.
It was not a happy marriage, although ten children had been born to them. But the Duke and Duchess had become estranged as the years passed by, and were practically separated. Although still residing under the same roof, they held no communication with each other. What is now called incompatibility of temper was the cause, and the Duke was a masterful, overbearing man, who wanted his own way, and had his own ideas as to the bringing up of his children. He would not suffer his wife to have any voice in their education and management, but claimed to control them completely through their governesses, who were quickly changed if they failed to give satisfaction. One at last was found to suit, and the fact served to suggest a motive for the crime. Whether or not there was really an intrigue between this Madame Deluzy and the Duke, it was strongly suspected, and the Duchess certainly detested her. The Duke put the governess in a false position. He preferred her society, and lived much with his children committed to her charge, in a remote wing of the house.
These relations continued unchanged for several years, and the Duchess, although consumed with jealous rage, would have ended them by pleading for a divorce. Here the King and Queen intervened, and sought to reconcile husband and wife. Madame Deluzy left the Praslins to take a situation at a school, the head of which, not strangely, asked for a personal character from the Duchess. Curious stories had been put about, which must be cleared up before the new governess could be engaged. The Duchess refused pointblank to give a certificate, although the mistress came in person with Madame Deluzy to seek it. No doubt the Duke took this refusal in very bad part, and it is believed a violent quarrel ensued, although no record of it was preserved. But it is a fact of the utmost importance as supplying the motive for the crime committed the same night, or rather in the small hours of the following morning.
At four o’clock agonized cries disturbed the sleeping household. They proceeded from the Duchess’s apartment, and were compared by those who heard them to the yells of a lunatic in a fit of fury. Frantic ringings of the bell, rapid and intermittent, were the next sounds, followed by deep groans, the thud of blows and the fall of a heavy body. The servants rushed down, and found an entrance through doors, which had been locked from within. All the external doors and shutters giving upon the gardens were closed, their fastenings intact; only that of an antechamber, leading to the staircase which communicated with the Duke’s bedroom on the floor above, was open. He was apparently still undisturbed, and it was not until the servants had penetrated to the inner apartment, where they found the Duchess lying prone in her nightdress and deluged with blood, that the Duke appeared on the staircase. He was greatly agitated, asked excitedly and repeatedly what had happened, and struck the wall and his head with his hands. When he saw the corpse he cried: “Who can have done this? Help! Help! Fetch a doctor. Quick!”