Judge Freedman granted the application for an order of arrest; the warrant was placed in the hands of Sheriff O'Brien; and Deputy Sheriffs Laurence, Delmore and the present elegant police court clerk, John McGowan, proceeded to the New York Hotel, and just as the guests were assembling for dinner, the haughty aristocrat was made a prisoner, despite his indignant protests.
In the newspapers of the day Mrs. Stille was described as "a beautiful woman, twenty-eight years old, who has seen more life all over the globe than any woman of her age now living." She was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, the daughter of respectable and well-to-do parents. Superbly developed and precocious, at a very early age Helene began to sound the chords of feeling and to taste the Circean cup that promises gratification and excitement, mingled with so much after-bitterness. When she was yet seventeen, she was married to George Stille at Philadelphia, after the briefest kind of an acquaintance. With him she came to New York, living in a style of careless gayety. Early in 1867, she gave birth to a child, named George after his father, and in June of that year Mrs. Stille, and Georgie, and his nurse, Mrs. Demard, were living in Saratoga. The dashing young wife's flirtative proclivities led to a quarrel with her husband, and he left her in a huff. His desertion did not perceptibly disturb the serene elasticity of her mind. She possessed expansive tastes and a capacious heart, and she was speedily consoling herself by the attentions of George W. Beers in the gay watering-place. When Helene, Mr. Beers, the baby and the nurse returned to New York in September, they occupied a suite of rooms at the Prescott House. Not unnaturally, the presence of the dashing woman in the hotel created a sensation, as such a presence always will, as long as men continue to be the weak, erring, susceptible creatures they are. So Helene was flattered, and courted, and admired; and as usual, some she fancied, some she liked, some she laughed at, and some she reserved for her more precious favors. Then, of course, Beers mounted up on his ear, and there was a quarrel, which resulted in the party leaving the Prescott House for quarters over the club house at the corner of Prince and Mercer streets. More quarrels for the same cause eventuated here, and then Beers left her for a while. Not at all disconcerted, she took the child and his nurse to the St. Denis Hotel, where Beers again returned, magnanimous and forgiving. But alas, it was no use. Helene's craving for admiration, masculine attention and money were insatiable. So Beers became wildly jealous and indignant, and left her for good. When next heard of, she was in Paris, where she had succeeded in making the acquaintance of the Due de Morny, and sometimes figured as la Duchesse.
Baron Henri Arnous de Reviere was the eldest son of Baron William Arnous de Reviere, Counsellor-general of the Department of the Loire Inferior. The title is hereditary; the family estate is situated at Varades; and the ancestral records are kept in the archives of the ancient city of Rennes in Brittany. The Baron first cropped up in this country about the outbreak of the rebellion, when people here and in England were in great excitement over the steps taken by the general government in securing the arrest of Messrs. Mason and Slidell. He had apparently made one of the elder Dumas' heroes his exalted ideal, for at the period we speak of he had set the fashionable world of Gotham agog by making a romantic conquest of a Mobile belle, who, after becoming thoroughly infatuated with him, eloped to a prominent watering-place. The interference of her friends prevented the consummation of a wedding; but his escapade formed the subject of a book, afterwards dramatized, and acted at Wallack's Theatre. Subsequently the Baron married Miss Blount, the daughter of a rich Southern lawyer.
When he returned to Paris, his fame had preceded him. Society in the gay capital under the empire was of the kind to appreciate his exploits and to exalt him into a sort of rivalship of Monte Cristo. He assiduously attended the theaters and salons, receiving homage everywhere-even from the emperor himself. Finally he mounted the rostrum, and his lectures on L'Amour were the talk of the gay city.
Among those who had rushed to listen to the Baron's impassioned eloquence was Helene Cecille Stille, now the proprietress of the handsomest hotel on the Rue Mont-martre. It need scarcely be premised that the wandering and appreciative eyes of the lecturer had rested on the beautiful American, as she sat before him in an attitude expressive of dormant passion, tinged with an imperious coquetry which was one of the most alluring of her charms. The Hotel Montmartre was then the fashionable resort of Louis Napoleon's dissolute nobility, and the Baron de Reviere soon found himself a worshiper in the luxurious retreat. He was not a man who courted by halves. He fell madly in love with the voluptuous Helene, and yielding to an irresistible penchant, the soiled beauty threw herself and her accumulated francs into his arms.
The Baron was one of those few men whose manners were perfect and whose dress never strikes the eye, but which seems to have developed on them as the natural foliage of their persons. He had a high appreciation of the enjoyments of life—vanity, ostentation, good eating, and even the austere joys of the family. At home with his wife he illustrated the tender assiduity of the young husband; abroad he was the personification of a youth just freed from parental discipline. While his wife was the happiest woman in Paris, he was rendering Miss Stille equally felicitous. The dinners he gave at home were unexcelled except by those banquets which he gave at the hotel in the Rue Montmartre.
So complete had become the Baron's infatuation with the fair Helene in September, that he took her to Biarritz, and, according to her own story, introduced her to the Emperor Napoleon. "Then," to use her own language when examined under oath, "I came back to Paris; stayed there about a week, and then went to London with de Reviere. After spending ten days in London, we went back to Paris and stopped at the Hotel de Louvre. We then went to Bordeaux, where I remained a few days, and whence I went to Lisbon, Portugal, staying six weeks, and went back to Paris by way of Marseilles, traveling part of the distance in the yacht of the Bey of Tunis. From Paris, I went with de Reviere to Nantes, thence to Nazarre, where I stayed two days with de Review's sister."
At this time the lady described her possessions as follows: "I had two hundred thousand francs worth of furniture, fifty thousand francs of objects de vertu, nine horses, five carriages, a hundred thousand francs worth of jewelry, many India shawls, twenty thousand francs worth of furs of every kind and description known in the world, any quantity of laces, twelve velvet dresses of different shades, and a toilet-set worth eighty-thousand francs, besides an income derived from my family in America of sixty thousand dollars," received regularly through the hands of her banker Mr. John Monroe of 5 Rue de la Paix.
Helene Stille then disposed of her maison and started with the Baron de Reviere on a trip to South America. A full account of that trip would read like a supplement to the Arabian Nights. For the purposes of this tour the lady became the Baroness de Reviere, and the pair traveled through the land of Cortez and Pizarro like some fabled Eastern conquerors. A courier rode ahead, and engaged nearly the entire apartments of every hotel at which they condescended to stop. Postilions and outriders accompanied their entrance. In the hotels the Baron and "Baroness" had their magnificent court dresses unpacked to impress and bewilder and confound the guests, while the gaping domestics would spread the news abroad until the entire population of the town would be assembled open-mouthed in front of the Baron's hotel, watching his movements and admiring in no stinted terms the statuesque beauty of the "Baroness." This extensive triumphal procession cost a lot of money, every cent of which is said to have been paid by the infatuated woman.
It was during their progress through Peru that she seems to have first made the discovery that the Baron already possessed one legal wife. From that hour, it is related to her credit, she stopped all marital relations. She parted from her companion then and there, and returned to Paris. She had two children by the Baron, as she testified in the legal proceedings brought by her. The eldest, a boy, was named "Monsieur le Comte Edmond Viel d'Espenilles; the girl, Santa Maria Rosa de Lenia—names given them by the Baron; for," added the lady, "he is fond of long and sonorous names."