Paris, November 12, 1838.
Your deplorable situation fills all minds here; no one doubts that unforeseen revelations, to which time and circumstances always lead, will completely justify the details that you yourself have given, and cause pity and universal interest to take the place of the prejudices you speak of. Meantime, monsieur, I am glad to be able to assure you that those prejudices have no access to the mind of any one here, and that if you need to add other proof than your unhappiness and despair, you will find it here in the unanimous assertion of the purity of your antecedents and the irreproachability of your life.
Receive, with the expression of my sorrowful sympathy, the assurance of my distinguished sentiments.
De Lamartine.
Balzac and Gavarni went to Belley, Bourg, and Maçon, employed counsel, and brought the matter before the Court of Cassation (Appeals). Balzac wrote, and published in the "Siècle," a long argument of the case (see Édition Définitive, vol. xxii., pp. 579-625), to which a brother-in-law of the murdered woman replied, rather weakly. Balzac rejoined in the "Presse," prefacing his second statement with the following words to the editor:—
October 2, 1839.
"Monsieur, I am obliged to make use of the newspapers, who have published my letter on the Peytel affair, to thank collectively all those persons who have addressed congratulations to me; and to assure those who have sent me startling testimony in favour of Peytel that their declarations will be received if the Court of Cassation grants a new trial."
The following very curious letter relating to this subject, from M. Moreau Christophe, inspector-general of prisons, to Gavarni, is worth preserving.
Paris, September 29, 1839.
My dear Monsieur Gavarni: you ask my opinion of the Peytel affair. What shall I say to you? When there is a woman, that is, love, in a crime, it is a tangle, the thread of which escapes the most clear-sighted. They think they hold the thread because they have got hold of the skein. The material of a fact does not constitute the truth of it. Why do you talk of judiciary trials [débats judiciaires]? A judiciary trial is to my eyes a legal lie. The accused lies to the lawyer, the lawyer lies to the judge, the newspapers lie to the public. How do you expect truth to come to light through that criss-cross of lies? She is just as much hidden from us at the Palais as if she were down at the bottom of her well. It is only behind the bolts, after condemnation, that truth can be found. And even then one must be very expert to find her. That was where I discovered the truth about the Laroncière affair, and several other love tangles, about which you think you know through the newspapers, whereas you know nothing at all.
That was how you yourself discovered the truth in the depths of Peytel's dungeon. Balzac has brought startling lights out of that dungeon. But,—shall I say it?—in spite of the immense dialectic and legal talent he has just displayed in the "Siècle" in defence of your unhappy friend, I fear that under his pen truth is impregnated with an atmosphere of romance. Lawyers sometimes fade the cause they plead. Besides, it is too late. Moreover, instead of saving the man who did the act, a subsequent revelation will only the more surely lose him, when he adds to the blood of the victim after the act a stain, however just, upon her memory. That is Peytel's case. Truth cannot save him now. A lie will kill him.
Moreau Christophe.
French legal arguments never commend themselves to the Anglo-Saxon mind; there seems to be a radical divergence of comprehension as to how truth can be got at, and Balzac's argument is certainly not convincing. But with the events of the past year before our minds we cannot be sure that prejudice and injustice on the other side may not have justified it.
The Court of Cassation rejected the appeal, and Peytel was executed as stated in the text. A history of this case is given in "Le Notaire Assassin," by Paul d'Orcières. Paris. 1884.
IV.
Page [693]. Concerning the letters of 1846.