to derues, on the eve of victory, the statement of jolly in regard to the power of attorney was a serious reverse. he had never thought of such an instrument, or he would have persuaded mme. de lamotte to have gotten permission of it before her disappearance. now he must try to get it from jolly himself. on the 26th of february he once again raised from a friendly notary a few thousand livres on the duplessis inheritance, and deposited the deed of sale of buisson-souef as further security. his pocket full of gold, he went straight to the office of jolly. to the surprise of the proctor derues announced that he had come to pay him 200 livres which he owed him, and apologised for the delay. taking the gold coins from his pockets he filled his three-cornered hat with considerably more than the sum due, and held it out invitingly to m. jolly. then he proceeded to tell him of his dealings with mme. de lamotte. she had offered, he said, to get the power of attorney for him, but he, trusting in her good faith, had said that there was no occasion for hurry; and then, faithless, ungrateful woman that she was, she had gone off with his money and left him in the lurch. "but," he added, "i trust you absolutely, m. jolly, you have all my business in your hands, and i shall be a good client in the future. you have the power of attorney—you will give it to me?" and he rattled the coins in his hat. "i must have it," he went on, "i must have it at any price at any price," and again the coins danced in his hat, while his eyes looked knowingly at the proctor. m. jolly saw his meaning, and his surprise turned to indignation. he told derues bluntly that he did not believe his story, that until he was convinced of its truth he would not part with the power of attorney, and showed the confounded grocer the door.
derues hastened home filled with wrath, and took counsel with his friend bertin. bertin knew something of legal process; they would try whether the law could not be invoked to compel jolly to surrender the power of attorney. bertin went off to the civil lieutenant and applied for an order to oblige m. jolly to give up the document in question. an order was made that jolly must either surrender it into the hands of derues or appear before a referee and show cause why he should not comply with the order. jolly refused still to give it up or allow a copy of it to be made, and agreed to appear before the referee to justify his action. in the meantime derues, greatly daring, had started for buisson-souef to try what "bluff" could do in this serious crisis in his adventure.
at buisson-souef poor m. de lamotte waited, puzzled and distressed, for news from his wife. on saturday, 17th, the day after the return of derues from versailles, he heard from mme. derues that his wife had left paris and gone with her son to versailles. a second letter told him that she had completed the sale of buisson-souef to derues, and was still at versailles trying to obtain some post for the boy. on february 19 mme. derues wrote again expressing surprise that m. de lamotte had not had any letter from his wife and asking if he had received some oysters which the derues had sent him. the distracted husband was in no mood for oysters. "do not send me oysters," he writes, "i am too ill with worry. i thank you for all your kindness to my son. i love him better than myself, and god grant he will be good and grateful." the only reply he received from the derues was an assurance that he would see his wife again in a few days.
the days passed, but mme. de lamotte made no sign. about four o'clock on the afternoon of february 28, derues, accompanied by the parish priest of villeneuvele-roi, presented himself before m. de lamotte at buisson-souef. for the moment m. de lamotte was rejoiced to see the little man; at last he would get news of his wife. but he was disappointed. derues could tell him only what he had been told already, that his wife had sold their estate and gone away with the money.
m. de lamotte was hardly convinced. how, he asked derues, had he found the 100,000 livres to buy buisson-souef, he who had not a halfpenny a short time ago? derues replied that he had borrowed it from a friend; that there was no use in talking about it; the place was his now, his alone, and m. de lamotte had no longer a right to be there; he was very sorry, poor dear gentleman, that his wife had gone off and left him without a shilling, but personally he would always be a friend to him and would allow him 3,000 livres a year for the rest of his life. in the meantime, he said, he had already sold forty casks of the last year's vintage, and would be obliged if m. de lamotte would see to their being sent off at once.
by this time the anger and indignation of m. de lamotte blazed forth. he told derues that his story was a pack of lies, that he was still master at buisson-souef, and not a bottle of wine should leave it. "you are torturing me," he exclaimed, "i know something has happened to my wife and child. i am coming to paris myself, and if it is as i fear, you shall answer for it with your head!" derues, undismayed by this outburst, re-asserted his ownership and departed in defiant mood, leaving on the premises a butcher of the neighbourhood to look after his property.
but things were going ill with derues. m. de lamotte meant to show fight; he would have powerful friends to back him; class against class, the little grocer would be no match for him. it was immediate possession of buisson-souef that derues wanted, not lawsuits; they were expensive and the results uncertain. he spoke freely to his friends of the difficulties of the situation.
what could he do? the general opinion seemed to be that some fresh news of mme. de lamotte—her reappearance, perhaps—would be the only effective settlement of the dispute. he had made mme. de lamotte disappear, why should he not make her reappear? he was not the man to stick at trifles. his powers of female impersonation, with which he had amused his good friends at buisson-souef, could now be turned to practical account. on march 5 he left paris again.
on the evening of march 7 a gentleman, m. desportes of paris, hired a room at the hotel blanc in lyons. on the following day he went out early in the morning, leaving word that, should a lady whom he was expecting, call to see him, she was to be shown up to his room. the same morning a gentleman, resembling m. desportes of paris, bought two lady's dresses at a shop in lyons.
the same afternoon a lady dressed in black silk, with a hood well drawn over her eyes, called at the office of m. pourra, a notary.
the latter was not greatly attracted by his visitor, whose nose struck him as large for a woman. she said that she had spent her youth in lyons, but her accent was distinctly parisian. the lady gave her name as madame de lamotte, and asked for a power of attorney by which she could give her husband the interest due to her on a sum of 30,000 livres, part of the purchase-money of the estate of buisson-souef, which she had recently sold. as mme. de lamotte represented herself as having been sent to m. pourra by a respectable merchant for whom he was in the habit of doing business, he agreed to draw up the necessary document, accepting her statement that she and her husband had separate estates. mme. de lamotte said that she would not have time to wait until the power of attorney was ready, and therefore asked m. pourra to send it to the parish priest at villeneuvele-roi; this he promised to do. mme. de-lamotte had called twice during the day at the hotel blanc and asked for m. desportes of paris, but he was not at home. while derues, alias desportes, alias mme. de lamotte, was masquerading in lyons, events had been moving swiftly and unfavourably in paris. sick with misgiving and anxiety, m. de lamotte had come there to find, if possible, his wife and child. by a strange coincidence he alighted at an inn in the rue de la mortellerie, only a few yards from the wine-cellar in which the corpse of his ill-fated wife lay buried. he lost no time in putting his case before the lieutenant of police, who placed the affair in the hands of one of the magistrates of the chatelet, then the criminal court of paris. at first the magistrate believed that the case was one of fraud and that mme. de lamotte and her son were being kept somewhere in concealment by derues. but as he investigated the circumstances further, the evidence of the illness of the mother and son, the date of the disappearance of mme. de lamotte, and her reputed signature to the deed of sale on february 12, led him to suspect that he was dealing with a case of murder.
when derues returned to paris from lyons, on march 11, he found that the police had already visited the house and questioned his wife, and that he himself was under close surveillance. a day or two later the advocate, duclos, revealed to the magistrate the fictitious character of the loan of 100,000 livres, which derues alleged that he had paid to mme. de lamotte as the price of buisson-souef. when the new power of attorney purporting to be signed by mme. de lamotte arrived from lyons, and the signature was compared with that on the deed of sale of buisson-souef to derues, both were pronounced to be forgeries. derues was arrested and lodged in the prison of for l'eveque.
the approach of danger had not dashed the spirits of the little man, nor was he without partisans in paris. opinion in the city was divided as to the truth of his account of mme. de lamotte's elopement. the nobility were on the side of the injured de lamotte, but the bourgeoisie accepted the grocer's story and made merry over the deceived husband. interrogated, however, by the magistrate of the chatelet, derues' position became more difficult. under the stress of close questioning the flimsy fabric of his financial statements fell to pieces like a house of cards. he had to admit that he had never paid mme. de lamotte 100,000 livres; he had paid her only 25,000 livres in gold; further pressed he said that the 25,000 livres had been made up partly in gold, partly in bills; but where the gold had come from, or on whom he had drawn the bills, he could not explain. still his position was not desperate; and he knew it. in the absence of mme. de lamotte he could not be charged with fraud or forgery; and until her body was discovered, it would be impossible to charge him with murder.
a month passed; mme. derues, who had made a belated attempt to follow her husband's example by impersonating mme. de lamotte in paris, had been arrested and imprisoned in the grand chatelet; when, on april 18, information was received by the authorities which determined them to explore the wine-cellar in the rue de la mortellerie. whether the woman who had let the cellar to derues, or the creditor who had met him taking his cask of wine there, had informed the investigating magistrate, seems uncertain. in any case, the corpse of the unhappy lady was soon brought to light and derues confronted with it. at first he said that he failed to recognise it as the remains of mme. de lamotte, but he soon abandoned that rather impossible attitude. he admitted that he had given some harmless medicine to mme. de lamotte during her illness, and then, to his horror, one morning had awakened to find her dead. a fear lest her husband would accuse him of having caused her death had led him to conceal the body, and also that of her son who, he now confessed, had died and been buried by him at versailles. on april 23 the body of the young de lamotte was exhumed. both bodies were examined by doctors, and they declared themselves satisfied that mother and son had died "from a bitter and corrosive poison administered in some kind of drink." what the poison was they did not venture to state, but one of their number, in the light of subsequent investigation, arrived at the conclusion that derues had used in both cases corrosive sublimate. how or where he had obtained the poison was never discovered.
justice moved swiftly in paris in those days. the preliminary investigation in derues' case was ended on april 28. two days later his trial commenced before the tribunal of the chatelet.
it lasted one day. the judges had before them the depositions taken by the examining magistrate. both derues and his wife were interrogated. he maintained that he had not poisoned either mme. de lamotte or her son; his only crime, he said, lay in having concealed their deaths. mme; derues said: "it is buisson-souef that has ruined us! i always told my husband that he was mad to buy these properties—i am sure my husband is not a poisoner—i trusted my husband and believed every word he said." the court condemned derues to death, but deferred judgment in his wife's case on the ground of her pregnancy.
and now the frail, cat-like little man had to brace himself to meet a cruel and protracted execution. but sanguine to the last, he still hoped. an appeal lay from the chatelet to the parliament of paris. it was heard on march 5. derues was brought to the palais de justice. the room in which he waited was filled with curious spectators, who marvelled at his coolness and impudence. he recognised among them a benedictine monk of his acquaintance. "my case," he called out to him, "will soon be over; we'll meet again yet and have a good time together." one visitor, wishing not to appear too curious, pretended to be looking at a picture. "come, sir," said derues, "you haven't come here to see the pictures, but to see me. have a good look at me. why study copies of nature when you can look at such a remarkable original as i?" but there were to be no more days of mirth and gaiety for the jesting grocer. his appeal was rejected, and he was ordered for execution on the morrow.
at six o'clock on the morning of may 6 derues returned to the palais de justice, there to submit to the superfluous torments of the question ordinary and extraordinary. though condemned to death, torture was to be applied in the hope of wringing from the prisoner some sort of confession. the doctors declared him too delicate to undergo the torture of pouring cold water into him, which his illustrious predecessor, mme. de brinvilliers, had suffered; he was to endure the less severe torture of the "boot."
his legs were tightly encased in wood, and wedges were then hammered in until the flesh was crushed and the bones broken. but never a word of confession was wrung from the suffering creature. four wedges constituting the ordinary torture he endured; at the third of the extraordinary he fainted away. put in the front of a fire the warmth restored him. again he was questioned, again he asserted his wife's innocence and his own.
at two o'clock in the afternoon derues was recovered sufficiently to be taken to notre dame. there, in front of the cathedral, candle in hand and rope round his neck, he made the amende honorable. but as the sentence was read aloud to the people derues reiterated the assertion of his innocence. from notre dame he was taken to the hotel de ville. a condemned man had the right to stop there on his way to execution, to make his will and last dying declarations. derues availed himself of this opportunity to protest solemnly and emphatically his wife's absolute innocence of any complicity in whatever he had done. "i want above all," he said, "to state that my wife is entirely innocent. she knew nothing. i used fifty cunning devices to hide everything from her. i am speaking nothing but the truth, she is wholly innocent—as for me, i am about to die." his wife was allowed to see him; he enjoined her to bring up their children in the fear of god and love of duty, and to let them know how he had died. once again, as he took up the pen to sign the record of his last words, he re-asserted her innocence.
of the last dreadful punishment the offending grocer was to be spared nothing. for an aristocrat like mme. de brinvilliers beheading was considered indignity enough. but derues must go through with it all; he must be broken on the wheel and burnt alive and his ashes scattered to the four winds of heaven; there was to be no retentum for him, a clause sometimes inserted in the sentence permitting the executioner to strangle the broken victim before casting him on to the fire. he must endure all to the utmost agony the law could inflict. it was six o'clock when derues arrived at the place de greve, crowded to its capacity, the square itself, the windows of the houses; places had been bought at high prices, stools, ladders, anything that would give a good view of the end of the now famous poisoner.
pale but calm, derues faced his audience. he was stripped of all but his shirt; lying flat on the scaffold, his face looking up to the sky, his head resting on a stone, his limbs were fastened to the wheel. then with a heavy bar of iron the executioner broke them one after another, and each time he struck a fearful cry came from the culprit. the customary three final blows on the stomach were inflicted, but still the little man lived. alive and broken, he was thrown on to the fire. his burnt ashes, scattered to the winds, were picked up eagerly by the mob, reputed, as in england the pieces of the hangman's rope, talismans.
some two months after the execution of her husband mme. derues was delivered in the conciergerie of a male child; it is hardly surprising, in face of her experiences during her pregnancy, that it was born an idiot. in january, 1778, the judges of the parliament, by a majority of one, decided that she should remain a prisoner in the conciergerie for another year, while judgment in her case was reserved. in the following august she was charged with having forged the signature of mme. de lamotte on the deeds of sale. in february, 1779, the two experts in handwriting to whom the question had been submitted decided in her favour, and the charge was abandoned.
but mme. derues had a far sterner, more implacable and, be it added, more unscrupulous adversary than the law in m. de lamotte.
not content with her husband's death, m. de lamotte believed the wife to have been his partner in guilt, and thirsted for revenge.
to accomplish it he even stooped to suborn witnesses, but the conspiracy was exposed, and so strong became the sympathy with the accused woman that a young proctor of the parliament published a pamphlet in her defence, asking for an immediate inquiry into the charges made against her, charges that had in no instance been proved.
at last, in march, 1779, the parliament decided to finish with the affair. in secret session the judges met, examined once more all the documents in the case, listened to a report on it from one of their number, interrogated the now weary, hopeless prisoner, and, by a large majority, condemned her to a punishment that fell only just short of the supreme penalty. on the grounds that she had wilfully and knowingly participated with her husband in the fraudulent attempt to become possessed of the estate of buisson-souef, and was strongly suspected of having participated with him in his greater crime, she was sentenced to be publicly flogged, branded on both shoulders with the letter v (voleuse) and imprisoned for life in the salpetriere prison. on march 13, in front of the conciergerie mme. derues underwent the first part of her punishment. the same day her hair was cut short, and she was dressed in the uniform of the prison in which she was to pass the remainder of her days.
paris had just begun to forget mme. derues when a temporary interest was-excited in her fortunes by the astonishing intelligence that, two months after her condemnation, she had been delivered of a child in her new prison. its fatherhood was never determined, and, taken from her mother, the child died in fifteen days. was its birth the result of some passing love affair, or some act of drunken violence on the part of her jailors, or had the wretched woman, fearing a sentence of death, made an effort to avert once again the supreme penalty? history does not relate.
ten years passed. a fellow prisoner in the salpetriere described mme. derues as "scheming, malicious, capable of anything." she was accused of being violent, and of wishing to revenge herself by setting fire to paris. at length the revolution broke on france, the bastille fell, and in that same year an old uncle of mme. derues, an ex-soldier of louis xv., living in brittany, petitioned for his niece's release. he protested her innocence, and begged that he might take her to his home and restore her to her children. for three years he persisted vainly in his efforts. at last, in the year 1792, it seemed as if they might be crowned with success. he was told that the case would be re-examined; that it was possible that the parliament had judged unjustly. this good news came to him in march. but in september of that year there took place those shocking massacres in the paris prisons, which rank high among the atrocities of the revolution. at four o'clock on the afternoon of september 4, the slaughterers visited the salpetriere prison, and fifth among their victims fell the widow of derues.
