arsenic for Marie Lafarge, but that she had begged him to say nothing about it. The doctor, Lespinasse by name, saw the patient, and immediately ordered antidotes, while some of the white powder was sent for examination to the chemist who had originally supplied the arsenic. The chemist does not seem to have detected poison, but he suggested that nothing more should be given Lafarge unless it had been prepared by a sure hand.
On this the mother denounced Marie to the now dying Lafarge as his murderess. The wife, who stood there with white face and streaming eyes, heard the terrible accusation, but made no protest. From this time till his last moments he could not bear the sight of his wife. Once, when she offered him a drink, he motioned, horror stricken, for her to leave him, and she was not present at his death, on the 14th of January. A painful scene followed between the mother and Marie by the side of the still warm corpse—high words, upbraidings, threats on the one side, indignant denials on the other. Then Marie’s private letters were seized, the lock of her strong-box having been forced, and next day, the whole matter having been reported to the officers of the law, a post-mortem was ordered, on suspicion of poisoning. “Impossible,” cried the doctor who had regularly attended the deceased. “You must all be wrong. It would be abominable to suspect a crime without more to go upon.” The post-mortem was, however, made, yet with such strange carelessness that the result was valueless.
It may be stated at once that the presence of arsenic was never satisfactorily proved. There were several early examinations of the remains, but the experts never fully agreed. Orfila, the most eminent French toxicologist of his day, was called in to correct the first autopsy, and his opinion was accepted as final. He was convinced that there were traces of arsenic in the body. They were, however, infinitesimal; Orfila put it at half a milligramme. Raspail, another distinguished French doctor, called it the hundredth part of a milligramme, and for that reason declared against Orfila. His conclusion, arrived at long after her conviction, was in favour of the accused. The jury, he maintained, ought not to have found her guilty, because no definite proof was shown of the presence of arsenic in the corpse.
This point was not the only one in the poor woman’s favour. Even supposing that Lafarge had been poisoned—which, in truth, is highly probable—the evidence against her was never conclusive, and there were many suspicious circumstances to incriminate another person. This was Denis Barbier, Lafarge’s clerk, who lived in the house under a false name, and whose character was decidedly bad. Lafarge was not a man above suspicion himself, and he long used this Barbier to assist him in shady financial transactions—the manufacture of forged bills of exchange, which were negotiated for advances. Barbier had conceived a strong dislike to Marie Lafarge from the first; it was he who originated the adverse reports. At the trial he frequently contradicted himself, as when he said at one time that he had volunteered the information that he had been buying arsenic for Marie, and at another, a few minutes later, that he only confessed this when pressed.
Barbier, then, was Lafarge’s confederate in forgery; had these frauds been discovered he would have shared Lafarge’s fate. It came out that he had been in Paris when Lafarge was there, but secretly. Why? When the illness of the iron-master proved mortal, Barbier was heard to say, “Now I shall be master here!” All through that illness he had access to the sick-room, and he could easily have added poison to the various drinks given to Lafarge. Again, when the possibilities of murder were first discussed, he was suspiciously ready to declare that it was not he who gave the poison. Finally, the German jurists, already quoted, wound up their argument against him by saying, “We do not actually accuse Barbier, but had we been the public prosecutors we should rather have formulated charges against him than against Madame Lafarge.”
Summing up the whole question, they were of opinion that the case was full of mystery. There were suspicions that Lafarge had been poisoned, but so vague and uncertain that no conviction was justified. The proofs against the person accused were altogether insufficient. On the other hand, there were many conjectures favourable to her. Moreover, there was the very gravest circumstantial evidence against another person. The verdict should decidedly have been “Not proven.” But public opinion, hastily formed, condemned Madame Lafarge in advance, and the machinery of the French criminal law helped to create a new judicial error, through obstinate reliance on a preconceived opinion.
Marie Lafarge was sentenced to hard labour for life, after exposure in the public pillory. The latter was remitted, but she went into the Montpelier prison and remained there many years. During her seclusion she received some six thousand letters from outside, the bulk of them sympathetic and kindly. Many in prose or verse, and in several languages, were signed by persons of the highest respectability. A large number offered marriage, some the opportunities for escape and the promise of happiness in another country. She replied to almost all with her own hand. Her pen was her chief solace during her long imprisonment, and several volumes of her work were eventually published, including her memoirs and prison thoughts. At last, having suffered seriously in health, she appealed to Napoleon III., the head of the Second Empire, and obtained a full pardon in 1852.
