Chapters 7
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1 01 - No. 1: Bluebeard 40:35
Number One. Bluebeard.
Compiled from transcripts of the judicial records of the ancient Duchy of Brittany. Not long ago, the world was startled by the revelations of the trial of Henri Langeroux, accused of murdering ten women and an eighteen-year-old boy. Bluebeard, the newspapers dubbed him, comparing him to the most grisly character in all the fairy tales. How few of those who echoed the news writer's epithet realized that Langeroux, who later expiated his crimes upon the guillotine at Versailles, and even the Bluebeard, whose story still frightens fretful children to stillness, were but amateurs in crime compared to the man who first bore the name. The man whose trial and conviction rocked medieval France to its foundations, and whose criminal exploits surpassed the wildest flights of imaginative fiction.
Never in the stories of Poe, of Gautier, of de Montpoisson, not even Bram Stoker's Count Dracula has a character more depraved, more terrible, more fascinating, been portrayed than Gilles de Laval, Sire de Retz, Marshal of France, Chamberlain to the French King and cousin to the mighty Duke of Brittany. The most monstrously depraved imagination, says a French criminologist, never could have conceived what this trial reveals. This memorable trial presents horrors unsurpassed in the entire volume of the world's history. During the year 1440, terrible rumors spread through Brittany, especially through the ancient Pays de Rennes, which extends along the Loire from Nantes to Pembeuf. In hundreds of peasant cottages, mothers wept for children they would see no more, and at the village inns where the laborers repaired from their fields to drink an evening cup of wine, Whispered curses, mingled with sighs, and exclamations of grief were heard.
And always, when the peasants muttered their sullen complaints to each other, the name of the Sire d'Retz was whispered. In that day the great feudal lords owned the common people almost as absolutely as they owned the land itself, and the Sire d'Retz's chateau was strong. His men-at-arms were many. What could a handful of wooden-shod peasants armed only with scythes and flails avail against the king's favorite? But one last hope remained to the peasantry. Though the chivalry of France was a mighty institution, the Church of Rome was mightier. No noble, be his sword ever so long, or his arrogance so great, dared lay a hand upon the humblest village priest. And to their spiritual advisors the peasants betook themselves when their pleas to the civil authorities fell on deaf ears.
Word was born to Jean Chateau Giraud, Bishop of Nantes, that oppression lay heavy upon his people in Brittany, and like the energetic prince of the church he was, the bishop dispatched his agents to investigate the reports. Gilles de Laval, the investigators found, had suddenly quit a most promising career at court, to immure himself in his country seat at Mâchecoul, a gloomy chateau composed of huge towers and surrounded by deep moats. Also, since his residence in the country, he had deeded vast tracts of land to John V. Duke of Brittany, in order, it was whispered, to prevent that nobleman's too close scrutiny of his actions. While the Marshal kept closely to his house most of the time, he was wont to make occasional trips to nearby towns, always accompanied by a princely retinue.
He spent money with a lavish hand, enriching innkeepers and tradesmen beyond their wildest dreams. And distributing vast sums of gold to the poor. It might have been supposed that the townspeople would have welcomed his coming as a visitation from the good St. Nicholas himself. Yet the bishop's agents found, whenever the marshal left the town, the cries of the poor, which had been restrained while the clink of his men-at-arms sounded in the streets, broke forth. Tears flowed, curses were uttered. A long-continued wail went up to heaven. Mothers had lost their children, babes had been snatched from the cradle, infants had been spirited almost from their mother's breasts, and it was known by sad experience that the vanished little ones would never be seen again.
Duretz's castle at Mashkul was always in condition to resist siege. The drawbridge was raised, the portcullis down, the gates closed, the retainers constantly under arms. No one except the marshal's own servants, the investigators heard, had even been known to go through the chateau's mysterious gates and come forth alive. In the surrounding country, strange tales of horror and deviltry circulated in hushed whispers, yet it was observed that the chapel of the castle was gorgeously decked with silk and cloth of gold, and the sacred vessels were encrusted with gems. The excessive devotion of the marshal was also noted. He was said to be passionately fond of ecclesiastical music, and to hear Mass three times daily.
But when dusk settled over the forest, and one by one the castle windows became illuminated, peasants would point to one casement, high up in an isolated tower from which a clear light streamed through the gloom. They told of a fierce red glare which came from that window at times, and of agonized cries, children's cries, ringing from it. Cries which had no answer but the howl of the wolf as he rose to quest and kill his prey by night. Once or twice a week, the drawbridge was lowered, and the servants of de Retz stood at the gateway, distributing clothes, money, and food to beggars who crowded round. It often happened that children were among those beggars. The servants would offer them rare dainties if they would go to the kitchen for them.
Those little tots who accepted the offers were never seen again. Charges had been laid before the Duke of Brittany, accusing the marshal as a wholesale murderer of children. The Duke had treated the accusations and the accusers alike with scorn. When this report was laid before the bishop, he summoned Pierre de l'Hospital, Grand Seneschal of Brittany, for a conference. Together they demanded that the Duke order the arrest of the marshal on a charge of murder, threatening action by the church if he refused. Reluctantly, the Duke had Pierre de l'Hospital proceed with the prosecution. Action followed immediately. A Sergeant d'Armes was given a warrant authorizing him to take the very mighty, very powerful Sire de Retz and his accomplices into custody.
Jean Labbé, the Sergeant, was a man worthy of the master he served. Though warned that resistance would likely be encountered at the Chateau, he selected a posse of twenty chosen men. And marched to the castle gate, calling lustily upon the sire de Retz to surrender. "'Who calls?' demanded the marshal from behind the portcullis. "'L'abbe,' replied the sergeant drawing his sword. The marshal turned pale, crossed himself, and ordered the drawbridge lowered, saying, "'It is impossible to resist fight.'" Years before an astrologer had warned him he would one day fall into the hands of an abbe. Until the moment the sergeant demanded his surrender, the marshal had supposed the prophecy meant he would one day become a monk.
Accompanied by two of his retainers, who had been inseparable companions, Henriet and Pontou, by name, the marshal crossed the drawbridge and handed his sword to Jean Labbé. Closely guarded by the sergeant's posse, the accused men made their way to Nantes, where Pierre de L'Hospital waited to dispense stern and even-handed justice. It was well for the sire de Retz that Labbé had brought his score of dauntless peace officers with him. When word passed among the villagers that redoubted Gilles de Laval was riding toward Nantes, surrounded by a bodyguard of agents of arms, peasants left their fields, women their kitchens, and laborers dropped their tools to throng the streets. Way, cried Jean Labbé, give way to the servants of my lord bishop.
A sullen murmur from the crowd answered him. Suddenly a woman's shrill scream rent the noonday calm. My child, she screamed. A curse of God, restore my child. Then a wild, wrathful howl broke from the crowd, rang along the Nantes' road, and died away, only when the great gates of the Chateau de Buffet clanged shut behind the prisoner. The whole population of Nantes was in a turmoil. It was whispered the investigation would be a farce. The Duke would surely screen his kinsmen. The Sire de Retz would be forced to surrender some more of his land, perhaps. After that, he would be released. Justice weighed heavily only on the poor. Sure enough, an attempt was made to shield the accused. Jean de Toucheron, whose office it was to collect evidence against the prisoners, was approached by the Duke and told that it would be pleasing to the great nobleman.
If the evidence was so colored as to render the charge on which de Retz would be tried less than capital. But the Duke reckoned without the Bishop of Nantes, and Pierre de l'Hospital, Grand Seneschal of Brittany, these fearless exponents of justice summoned de Tourcheronde before them. Monsieur, said de l'Hospital, fixing his penetrating black eyes on the lawyer, your duty lies plain before you. See to it that it be well performed. The bishop fingered the jeweled cross suspended from his neck by its golden chain. You have taken an oath to do equal justice to a rich and poor, Monsieur, he reminded de Tourcheron. Excommunication may be the penalty for oath-breaking. Criminal procedure, then in vogue in France, differed from that of England, in that the accused was not permitted to confront his accusers face to face at the trial.
Evidence for the prosecution was taken before a commissioner. The transcript of this testimony was then transmitted to the trial justice who summoned the accused before him, read a brief summary of the offense of which he was charged, and proceeded to examine him.
No opportunity was afforded the prisoner for cross-examination of the prosecution's witnesses, nor was he informed of the nature of their testimony. It remained for the judge to piece together the stories of the prosecution and defense. Deciding for himself whether the prisoner had adequately refuted the testimony of his accusers. Such a thing as trial by jury was undreamed of anywhere outside of England. Manifestly unfair as this procedure was in many respects, it had one advantage lacked by the common law system. The accused was unable to invent false testimony with which to meet unexpected statements made by the prosecution's witnesses. The investigation opened on the morning of September 18th, 1440.
The witnesses were introduced into the Hall of Justice singly, or in groups if they were relations. On entering the room, each witness knelt before the commissioner, kissed the crucifix, and swore with his hand on the Gospels that he would speak the truth, and nothing but the truth. After this, he related all the facts in his knowledge pertaining to the case, without being either interrogated or interrupted. The first to present herself was Périne Lusaud, living at La Roche-Bernard. Tears streaming down her face, she related how two years before, in the month of September, the sire de Retz, with all his retinue, passed through La Roche-Bernard. She lived opposite the house where the nobleman stopped.
Her child, a lad of ten, the finest in the village, had attracted the attention of de Retz as he stood at a window leaning on his squire's shoulder. Pontu, de Retz's servant, spoke to the boy, asking him what he intended to be when he grew up.
The lad replied. Very well, Pontu answered. Come with me, and I will give you a sword. The child entered the house with Pontu for the coveted weapon, and was never seen again. Deposition followed deposition, always to the same effect. Parents had left their houses, sometimes only for a few moments. When they returned, their children were gone. An old beggar woman, once subsisting on the peasant's alms, had been observed going toward the castle at evening many times, accompanied by children. She invariably returned alone. In a few months, from some unknown source, she had amassed a competence, moved from the neighborhood, and was seen no more. Thirty children had disappeared from a single village within a year, and the victims were always boys.
No girl-child had been molested. So frequent had the kidnappings become that parents dared not send children to tend sheep or goats, or carry food to their fathers or brothers working in the fields.
When Jean Labbé went to the chateau to arrest Arez, Périne Lussard, half crazed with grief at the loss of her child, had accompanied him. Entering a stable while the sergeant's guard was there to protect her, she had found a heap of ashes and powder, which gave off a sickly and peculiar smell. At the bottom of a trough she found a child's shirt half burned, the remaining portion caked with dried blood. After several days spent in taking similar testimony, the prosecution announced its case complete, and court was open to hear what defense Gilles de Laval, Sire de Retz, and Marshal of France had to offer to the dastardly crimes charged against him.
The Marshal entered the courtroom dressed in doublet and hose of white satin, thickly sewn with seed pearls. About his neck hung several golden collars, emblems of his orders of knighthood. On his breast, a half-score military decorations blazed, for the Sire de Rettes had been a mighty warrior of France before he took up his abode in the country and became the object of terrible suspicions. On a dozen hotly contested fields he had led the French forces to victory, and had engaged in the siege of Orleans with Jean d'Arc. Entering the castle's moat with her, and being severely wounded by an English pikeman, Upon his head was a cap of ermine, the royal fur which none but the king and a few of his most valuable nobles were privileged to wear.
No one at first glance would have thought the sire de Rett's capable of such horrid crimes as those of which he stood accused. His face was somewhat pale in war, in repose, an expression of gentle melancholy. But his beard was his outstanding characteristic. In sharp contrast to his hair and mustache, which were light, almost blonde, It was jet black.
Yet in certain lights it assumed a blue hue. It was this peculiarity which earned for the Sire DeRetz the surname of Bluebeard, a name that has attached to him in popular romance since the Middle Ages, though his story has undergone a strange change, remaining in general memory only as the ghastly fairy tale which frightens children today. Mild and gentle as DeRetz's face appeared at first glance, however, a closer inspection revealed an innate cruelty. In his eyes there always smoldered a lurking sinister expression, which now and again glowed like charcoal embers when blown upon by the fire bellows. At such times he ground his teeth, like a wild beast about to leap upon its prey, and his lips became so contracted they showed pale and bloodless against his beard.
Then it was his beard appeared to bristle and show its blue shade more than ever, and his face paled to a corpse gray. After a few moments his features became serene again. A sweet smile reposed on the lips which had a moment before been set in a diabolical snarl, and his expression relapsed into a vague and tender melancholy. "'Monsieur,' said the marshal, lifting his furred cap and saluting his judges with formal politeness, "'pray expedite my matter as quickly as possible. I would that my unfortunate case be soon disposed of, for I am peculiarly anxious to consecrate myself to God's service.' He has pardoned my sins, and I would even enter a monastery and become a monk. Fear not, I shall richly endow several of the churches of Nantes, and shall distribute the greater portion of my goods among the poor, the better to secure the salvation of my soul.
Had this been Spain, where religious fervour swayed even the actions of courts of justice, the sire de Retz's plea might easily have operated to discontinue the prosecution. But the Frenchman Is this practical in things spiritual as in things temporal?" Monseigneur, gravely replied Pierre de l'Hospital, it is ever a while to think of the salvation of one's soul, but you will please remember that we are now consumed with the salvation of your body.
A look of impatience flitted across the face of Gilles de Retz.
I have confessed to the Father Superior of the Carmelites, he answered. Through his absolution I have been able to communicate. I am therefore guiltless and purified." Pierre de l'Hospital drummed noiselessly on the polished table before him with his fingertips. True servant of the church though he was, this talk of confession and purification pleased him not at all. Today he was sitting in this secular capacity of judge. The body of a man accused of killing the bodies of helpless children was on trial before him. Let the superior of the Carmelites supervise the welfare of the prisoner's soul. He, Pierre L'Hospital, would perform the earthly office. Men's justice is not in common with that of God, he said finally, nor though you were forty times confessed and shriven.
Can I tell you what your sentence will be until I've heard the evidence in your case? Be ready then to make your defense and listen carefully to the charges brought against you. He nodded to the court's clerk, who rose and unrolled a parchment.
Hear ye. Gilles de Lavois, sire de Retz, consulier to majesty. The King and Marshal of France, read the priest. Forasmuch as it has come to our ears that you have seized and caused to be seized the bodies of several little children of the diocese of Nantes, not only ten or twenty, but thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, one hundred, two hundred and more, and have murdered them with inhuman tortures, afterwards burning their bodies to ashes, we do charge and adjure your true answer to make to these charges, and say whether ye be guilty or not guilty of these abominable doings. The grave eyes appeared. The hospital never left the prisoner's face while the indictment was being read.
What justification can you make? he asked. Take an oath in the Holy Gospels to declare the truth. Not I, exclaimed the marshal heartily. The witnesses are bound to declare their testimony on oath, but I, the accused, need take no oath. I will make no answer. Pierre de l'Hospital rose from his chair, gathering his scarlet robes of office about him. He was a small man, wiry and quick as a terrier, and with something of the terrier's nervous activity in his movements. His great head, with its high, white brow, seemed to weigh down his diminutive body. His eyes, large and black, had been likened to the pools of new ink, and truly, like the ink, they recorded everything. These eyes he fixed on Duret's in an unwinking stare.
"'Do you refuse to plead?' he asked in a voice of ominous calm. "'I do,' thundered the Marshal, the death-like pallor which told of his ungovernable temper beginning to spread over his face. "'I'm Marshal of France. I'm—' Pierre de l'Hospital stretched out a scarlet-clad arm and pointed to a baize curtain hanging near the judge's bench. The portiere swung back, revealing an alcove recessed from the main chamber. In it was a long low bench of dark wood worn smooth and polished by much use. At either end were curious rope and ring attachments, and above it was a windlass over which the ropes wound. Standing beside the instrument were two men in close-fitting tights of brown stuff, uncouth headgear, masking their faces.
Through the eye holes in their masks they watched Pierre de l'Hospital expectantly. Gilles de Retz glanced once through the uncurtained doorway, and cast a look of murderous hate at his judge. But a pallor more sallow than that of rage overspread his face, for the low wooden bench in the alcove was the rack, and the masked men beside it were the official torturers of the court. Gilles de Retz, who delighted in the sight of suffering children and joy in the sound of their death moans, had no stomach for the rack. I will answer. He said, attempting to compose his features. Torture me not, good Monsieur de l'Hospital, I implore you. As to the charges, I say nothing. They are simply false and columnist.
Indeed, answered his judge, and am I to believe that all the people who complain of having lost their children lied under oath? Undoubtedly, replied the Marshal, his equanimity restored now that the curtain had been again drawn before the rack. What am I to know of their brats? Am I their keeper? Gain me the same answer, remarked Pierre de l'Hospital. However, as you solemnly deny these charges, we must question Henriet and Pontou. Henriet! Pontou! cried the Marshal, trembling. Surely they accuse me of nothing? Not as yet. They have not been questioned, but they are about to be brought into court, and I do not think they will lie in the face of justice. I demand that my servants be brought not forward as witnesses against their master, stormed the marshal, his brow wrinkling and his beard bristling blue upon his chin.
Our master is above the gossiping tales of his servants.
Do you think, Monsieur, your servants will accuse you? I demand that I, a Marshal of France, a Baron of the Duchy, should be sheltered from the slanders of small folk whom I disown as my servants if they are untrue to me. Justice knows no small folk and no great. We shall see what Henriet and Pontot have to say. Pierre de L'Hôpital nodded meaningly toward the curtain, concealing the rack. There are means of gleaning this roof. At a sign from the judge, guards led the sire de Retz back to his prison. In the corridor outside the courtroom, the marshal passed Henriet and Pontus, escorted by agents d'Armes. Henriet averted his eyes, but Pontus burst into tears at the sight of his master. Duretz held out his hand, which Pontus kissed affectionately.
"'Remember I'll have done for you, my children,' said the marshal, "'and be good and faithful servants.' Again Pontus covered his hands with kisses, but Henriet shanked from him with a shudder.
In silence, the two culprits were conducted to the bar of the court. Pierre de l'Hospital looked sharply from one to the other, then signed to the clerk to read the indictment which charged them as accomplices of the sire de Retz. Never for an instant did the eyes of the president of the court leave the face of Henriet, while the clerk droned out the charge. Henriet was a sharp contrast to Pontou. Pontou's bullet head, short, thick neck, and undershot jaw. Betoken to nature innately cruel and bestial. Nothing but torture, carried past the limit of human endurance, would wring the truth from him. Henriet, on the other hand, was as fragile and as prettily made as a girl. Slender and tall, with tapering white fingers and blond hair falling in loose curls about his ears, he looked anything but the criminal he was accused of being.
His blue eyes, though set too close together, were mild and timid in expression. And the slope of his beardless chin bespoke a nature rather weak than wicked. What say ye, O wretched men, guilty or not guilty? asked Pierre de l'Hospital, still gazing fixedly at Henriet.
Alas, mon Dieu! exclaimed Henriet. I am even as you say. I shall tell all, for I have another master besides my poor master of wretts, and I shall soon be with the heavenly one.
He would have continued had not a shout from Pontus interrupted him. "'Monsieur les juges,' he cried, "'my poor friend is tossing the head. He is mad. All he says is but the raving of a lunatic.' "'Ah, Pontus, out of thine own mouth hast thou convicted thyself,' returned Pierre de l'Hospital. "'For hast thou not been concerned, and devil-tree thou wouldst not have feared thy friend's ravings?' Proceed, he nodded to Henriet, and see to it that thou speakst about the truth.
But Henriet seemed to have lost the power of speech. Only incoherent murmurings came from his nervously working lips. At last he managed to gasp. Monsieur Le Juge, I cannot speak to the abominable words I have to utter while that is in my sight. He pointed a trembling finger to the great crucifix suspended above the judge's bench. Led by Pierre de l'Hospital, the court rose and stood with bared heads, while amid a death-like silence the image of the Lord was veiled in black bunting. Condensed, Henriet's testimony was as follows.
On graduating from the University of Angus, he had taken the situation of reader in the household of Sire de Retz. From the first, the Marshal had taken a liking to him, and soon made him chamberlain and confidant. When he had been in the household about six months, the Marshal decided to deed the castle of Chantons to the Duke of Brittany.
The night preceding the morning, the Duke took possession. The Marshal summoned Henri Pontou and one petit Robin to his bed-chamber. When all were assembled, de Retz compelled Henri To kneel on the bare floor and take a solemn and horrible oath never to reveal what was about to be told him. The oath taken, the Sire de Retz told them he was expecting the Duke's officers to take over the chateau the following day, and before that happened there were certain matters which had to be disposed of. Pontu and Robin grinned knowingly at this, but Henriet was in the dark until the other two servants procured ropes and poles tipped with hooks. They then led the way to an old disused well. Giving Henri a torch and one of the grappling hooks, they lowered him into the well with instructions to pass up all he found there.
What was his horror to find the hole filled with bodies of children long dead? Almost fainting from fright and horror, he had nevertheless proceeded with the task assigned him. And before daybreak, the well was emptied and the little bodies, all of them, terribly mutilated, burned to ashes in a great bonfire the other two servitors built. He had counted thirty-six heads in the well, but more bodies than heads.
Following this horrifying experience, life went on as usual within the marshal's household for several months. DeRetz was deeply religious, and attended daily masses in his private chapel. Accompanied by his entire suite. But one day, just at dusk, the marshal summoned Henriet to a room in a remote tower where a great fire was blazing on the hearth.
Fetch me a child, his master ordered curtly. Not daring to ask an explanation, Henriet went outside the castle, seized a little boy he found in a nearby road, and carried him to his lord. Kill it! The sire de Rett spayed him. Kill it, the young secretary stammered. How? Doot! de Rett stamped his foot impatiently, at the same time drawing back his lips like a snarling beast. Slit its throat!
Henriette carried out the fiendish order while the marshal stood by and gloated at the sight of the little one's death agonies. Then began a life of crime unspeakable for Henriette. Child after child he bore to his master, always with the same fatal result. Sometimes de Retz himself inflicted the deathstroke. More often he stood by, watching his servants performing the deed.
Lucky was the child whose life ended with one quick blow from knife or axe. Torture, slow and horrible, was the lot of the great majority of the little victims. When one of these massacres was finished and the poor infant finally dead, The marshal was invariably filled with remorse for the deed. He would toss, weeping and praying on the bed, or recite fervent litanies on his knees, while his servants washed up the floor and incinerated the little victims in the great fireplace. An insupportable odor filled the room where these slaughters invariably took place, but the marshal inhaled it with keenest delight. Henri acknowledged he had seen no less than forty children done to death in this manner, and so good a description was he able to give of several that it was possible to identify them as children whose parents had testified to their loss.
Relating the case of two lads named Hamelin, babes of three and four years respectively, he told how the older boy waited his turn weeping and praying while his little brother was slowly tortured to death.
But this is incredible, exclaimed Pierre de l'Hospital, whose eyes dilated at the horrors of Henriet's revelations. Only some of the Caesars of Rome have been charged with such detestable crimes. Monsieur le Juge, Henriet replied, it was the acts of these Caesars my master desired to emulate. I used to read him the chronicles of Sauronius and Tacitus. He never tired hearing them, but ever urged me to read more and more. How many children do you estimate the Sire Duretz and his servants killed?
To reckon in his long I, from my own wretched part, confessed to killing twelve with my own hand at my master's orders. And I have brought him more than three score. I know this devil's business has long gone on before I entered his service. "'Have you more to declare?' asked the President of the Court, siding himself with the cross. "'Nay, mon juge, save to ask Pontot, my friend, to corroborate what I have said.' "'Pontot,' said Pierre de l'Hospital, turning his burning eyes on the other culprit, "'I command you, in the name of God and of justice, to declare all that you know.'" The deep grave lines about the older servant's mouth linked in as his facial muscles tightened, but he kept silence.
For those who will not speak, there is the rack, the judge reminded him, signing to the torturers to make ready. But Pontu, heartless murderer though he was, had still the virtue of loyalty to the hand that fed him. Not until the executioners had forced him on the rack. And the cold iron of the gives bit into his wrists and ankles did he commence his confession.
Then as the head torturer laid his hand to the windlass which would tighten the ropes, dislocating the prisoner's knee and elbow joints, Pontus' confession began. If he had maintained a stubborn silence in the face of torture, his volubility was great enough now. All that Henri had told and more he related, heaping description of crime after revolting crime before the court, till Pierre de l'Hospital would hear no more. "'Enough!' exclaimed the judge, cutting short the prisoner's abhorrent tale. "'We're a thousand men on trial before us. Thou hast told enough to convict them all.' Next day, Gilles de Laval stood once more before his judges. "'What answer make you to the charges?' Ask Pierre de l'Hospital.
I am Chamberlain and Marshal to his venerated Majesty the King France, began the prisoner arrogantly. This is no fair of the King of France, thundered the judge, incensed at the criminal's effrontery. Confess or by a lady in Saint-Denis, you go to the rack. Cowled his iron nerve, broke by the threat of torture, Gilles de Laval told such a story as no court before or since ever listened to.
Shortly before his voluntary retirement from the royal court, he had chanced upon a Latin book detailing the lives of the Caesars. Tales of revolting cruelty, which would have sickened an ordinary man, thrilled him with the greatest pleasure. He resolved to imitate or surpass these monsters of antiquity. That very night, he carried his resolve into execution by running his sword through a luckless waif he came upon in the streets of Paris. But Paris was a great city, under the ever-watchful eye of the king's officers. His plans could not be carried out there in safety. So as soon as he could wind up his affairs, he renounced his promising career as a courtier, and submerged himself at his principal country seat.
From the day he settled at Marche School, his depredations on the childhood of the diocese of Nantes began. In less than seven years he had committed, personally or by agent, more than eight hundred child murders. The confession finished. Gilles de Laval looked expectantly at his judges. He was a very great, a very powerful nobleman. Yet the president of the court had shown himself fearless and impartial throughout the trial. Would they order his lands confiscated? Would they dare imprison him? Grand seigneur and favorite of the King, though he was.
Pierre de l'Hospital, president of the court, glanced from left to right, where his associate justices sat. Each way he looked, his colleagues met his eyes steadily and nodded briefly, significantly. Pierre de l'Hospital looked down upon the prisoner, as though some loathsome reptile were coiled upon the pavement before him.
And at the words a bell high up in the tower of the Hall of Justices began to toll. Gilles de Laval fell back apace, his jaw relaxing as he looked upon the stern-faced man who had pronounced the sentence. I'm mort! To death! Gilles de Laval, sire de Retz, chamberlain and counsellor to the king, cousin of John V. Duke of Brittany, and marshal of France, had been sentenced to die. Like a common felon. I'm mort, he muttered wonderingly, stunned by the two-word sentence.
To hang in shame between two criminals.
Our lord so die, dear master, whispered Henriet, who, pale and tearful, had stood to receive his sentence. The sire de Retz turned on him with an animal snarl. His lips went back from his teeth, and his beard showed blue in the half-light streaming through the courtroom windows.
He began raising his clenched fists over his trembling servant. You traitor, you!
Two agendarmes laid hands on him and led him from the Justice Hall. Every effort was made to stay execution. John V. Duke of Brittany. was not pleased that his cousin should die upon the gallows. Gold, lands, all the mighty fortune of the mighty sire to Retz were offered the bishop of Nantes if only he would consent to have the sentence commuted. Churches would be endowed, countless masses should be said, for the souls of the worthy poor splendid abbeys should be built.
Next morning a procession of priests, monks, and civil guards wound its way through the Nantes to the meadow. of Biesse on the further side of the River Loire. Three men, hands bound to sides, iron clanking at their ankles, marched near its head. The procession halted near a line of poplar trees, where three gibbets, the center one somewhat higher than its neighbors, had been erected.
Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice. Let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplication, chanted the choir. The tallest of the three prisoners, elegantly dressed in white satin, mounted the rickety stepladder standing beneath the center gallows. A masked executioner adjusted the noose about his neck, being careful not to disturb his pointed blue-black beard on the creamy lace ruffles at his throat. The other two condemned knelt in their chains beneath their respective gibbets.
A ruffle of drums, a swelling anew of the de profundus from the choir of monks. The tall stool was struck from under him, and the body of Gilles de Laval swayed grotesquely in midair above the fire of brushwood and pitch the executioner lighted under it. From the crowd came six veiled women and six barefooted Carmelite friars carrying an ornate coffin. The body of Gilles de Retz was cut down, scarcely scorched. And carried toward the Carmelite church of Our Lady.
Two more high stools crashed to earth, two more bodies dangled at rope's ends, two more fires roared beneath the gallows. But no coffin was brought forward for Henriet and Pontus, their bodies crisped to ashes, borne away by the autumn breezes among the poplars of the Loire and the meadow of Béas, while in the Carmelite church of Our Lady. A mighty choir of monks chanted the responses of a solemn high mass of requiem, above the remains of Gilles de Laval, Sire de Retz, Chamberlain and courtier to the King, Marshal of France, and Bluebeard, the greatest criminal ever tried before a court of justice.
Note. From the peculiarities of his case, as related by his servants and himself, There can be no doubt that Gilles de Laval, like the famous Jack the Ripper of London, was a victim of that form of insanity known to modern psychiatrists as Algolagnia. See A. A. Brill, Psychoanalysis, Wharton and Steele, Medical Jurisprudence, Church and Peterson, Nervous Diseases and Insanity. But his insanity was not such as would entitle him to escape legal execution. Either under the common or civil law, since by his own confession he knew the unlawfulness of his acts, and was clearly able to distinguish between right and wrong, as his fits of remorse showed. See Clark or any standard textbook on criminal law.
Seabury Quinn.
This is the first of a series of articles written for Weird Tales by Seabury Quinn. The second will appear in the November issue.
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2 02 - No. 2: The Grave Robbers 11:00
Number Two. The Grave Robbers.
The thief who would steal the pennies off a dead man's eyes is proverbially the meanest crook in the world. Judged by present-day standards, he is also a piker, for with post-war inflation like everything else, mortuary thievery has increased its ante. Robbing the dead, or more accurately, stealing from the bereaved, is so mean a form of crime that it is, fortunately, seldom met with. Yet a few crooks have specialized in this despicable thievery, and found it, while it lasted, exceedingly remunerative. Late in 1921 and early in 1922, the police of Chicago began to receive complaints from recently bereaved residents of the city's west side. The articles stolen varied in kind and value. But the circumstances surrounding the crimes were invariably the same.
A family, which had lost a member, would attend the internment, and when they returned, they found their home had been burglarized and rifled of every valuable of an easily portable nature. For three months, this funeral burglar carried his flashlight and jimmy in the wake of death in Chicago's west side. More than fifteen complaints were lodged with the authorities, and the burglaries went merrily on. At last, the police department decided to set a trap for the thief. Special officers were detailed to the case, and when a prominent resident died, they asked permission to attend the funeral services. When the friends and mourners had entered the waiting limousines and driven off to the cemetery, the officers remained behind.
Scarcely had the last motor in the funeral procession disappeared when the telephone began to ring imperatively. The officers glanced significantly at each other and let the bell continue to jangle. Five minutes passed. Again the phone rang, and again the officers ignored it. Another five minutes, and the telephone rang again, longer this time, as if the party on the line were urging Central to make an effort to get the family. Again the detectives remained mute. Hardly enough time to allow a rapid walker to travel from the corner drugstore to the residence elapsed before the police heard the sharp click of a rear window being forced. And a neatly dressed young man stepped briskly from the butler's pantry to the dining room, making with unerring instinct for the sideboard where the family silver was stored.
At the station house, he gave his name as Benjamin Shermerke, aged twenty-one, and admitted being the perpetrator of the series of burglaries which had cost bereaved Chicagoans thousands of dollars. His system, he told the police, was a simple one. Each morning, he searched the obituary columns in the daily papers. When the names of people living in prosperous sections of the city appeared, he made careful note of the day and hour of the funeral, noting whether services be from the home, church, or undertaking establishment. After allowing a reasonable time for the obsequies, he would ring up the family residence. If anyone answered, he would announce himself as a friend of the deceased and offer condolences.
Then after another interval, he would call again. If he received another answer, he would repeat the farce of tendering sympathy and bide his time. When his telephone call was finally unanswered, or if his first ring brought no response, he would go to the house, force a window, and make off with silverware, jewelry, and anything else easily carried. His genteel appearance averted suspicion, even if he were seen leaving a prosperous neighborhood with a bundle. A speedy trial followed, and residents of Chicago's West Side will have to defer the doubtful pleasure of entertaining Mr. Schmerke until he has exhausted the hospitality of Joliet Penitentiary. An attempt to practice the same specialty was nipped almost in the bud in New York early in 1922.
Samuel Deutsch A four-times offender against the New York burglary statute was caught red-handed by a young woman who happened to remain in the house to straighten up the rooms while the family was attending the burial of a deceased relative at Woodlawn Cemetery. When discovered, Deutsch told the young lady, "'It's all right, I'm the undertaker.'" "'You're a thief,' replied the courageous girl and grabbed him, calling loudly for help at the same time. He shook her off but was captured before he left the block. "'You've got me right.'" He admitted the policeman. I used to look up the old bits, and when I seen a bunch of them in the same neighborhood, I'd grab me a jimmy and do me stuff. Had Deutsch used Sir Murky's precaution of telephoning, the chances are he would still be at liberty.
As it is, he had been made very comfortable in his old cell at Sing Sing, where he will continue for twenty years, less time off for good behavior. No less ingenious and decidedly safer for its perpetrator was the scheme conceived by Samuel F. Ware. A negro undertaker of Atlanta, Georgia, for mulleting relatives of persons he had buried. Ware's plan had for its basis the principle of the Indian gift. He would sell a casket, then steal it back again. Doctors and undertakers' mistakes, and often their profits, are usually permanently screened from public view by several cubic feet of earth. And Ware's dereliction might have gone unsuspected indefinitely had it not been for his desire to secure the last split-scent of profit from his perfidy.
An expensive casket might be sold, stolen back, and resold two or three times. But after its fourth or fifth internment, it began to look shopworn. A little time and expense spent in refinishing it would have made it a readily merchantable commodity once more, but ware was averse, even to the small overhead chargeable against his profits. Accordingly, he employed an emissary to canvas the smaller funeral supply houses. Offering high-grade caskets at prices attractively below the usual wholesale. One of these traveling salesmen approached the Southern Undertaking Supply and Sales Company of Jacksonville and told them a certain Atlanta undertaker was preparing to furnish them a limited number of fine caskets at a price far below that of the manufacturers.
So low, indeed, were the prices quoted that the company's secretary became suspicious and communicated his suspicions to Police Chief Beavers of Atlanta. Chief Beavers also suspected that all was not as it should be, and detailed two plainclothesmen to investigate these bargain counter caskets. Southview Cemetery is the principal Negro burying ground of Atlanta, and it was here the detectives began their quest. Nothing untoward was apparent. The place presented the usual hodgepodge of expensive monuments and neglected graves common to all Negro cemeteries in the South. The wind sowed dolefully through the Lombardy poplars. Birds twittered and quarreled in the branches. A pair of Negro gravediggers plied their mournful trade in the unyielding yellow clay.
Well, just stick around tonight and see what happens, one of the detectives said. The other agreed, and after a cursory inspection of the graveyard and a few formal questions to the gravediggers, the sluice left. That night, they posted themselves behind the fence, where they could get a full view of several new and flower-decked graves. Toward morning, an undertaker's motor casket wagon drove to the cemetery gate, was admitted. And chugged its way to the new section of the graveyard. Three men, armed with mattocks and spades, alighted, carefully removed the floral pieces from a grave and commenced to dig. Tense with excitement, the detectives saw the trio unearth an expensive casket, tumble the body back into the grave, replace the earth and flowers, then drive off with the burial case for which several hundred dollars had recently been paid.
Drawing their revolvers, the detective barred the wagon's passage. The occupants attempted to run them down, but the sight of the officers' guns and shields, coupled with the fact that they were white men, dampened their ardor for the exploit. They surrendered. When the officers inspected their catch, they found they had taken Samuel F. Ware, president of a prosperous Negro undertaking company, and Thurman Jones and Claude Maddox, gravediggers in the cemetery's employee. A few days after Ware's duplicity became known in Atlanta, The traditional belief that colored people in the South always give cemeteries a wide berth exploded with an impressive bang. Scores of enraged colored residents of the city whose dead had been interred in the Southview Cemetery, armed with picks, shovels, hoes, rakes, any sort of delving instrument they could find, descended upon the peaceful God's Acre and began a personal investigation of their relatives' graves.
The first grave opened was that of Nancy Joy, one-time Belle of Auburn Avenue. Her casket was gone. It was found in the next grave to be explored, that of a Negro man. Ware had stolen it after burying Nancy and resold it to the man's family, for some reason, perhaps because he had not yet gotten around to it. He had not stolen that particular casket a second time.
As each grave was opened new, wailings and moanings arose until it seemed the cemetery was witnessing A gigantic multiple funeral, each part of which was equipped with a large and demonstrative core of mourners. For a time it appeared that the cemetery would be bereft of its dead, but after striving futilely to calm the excited Negroes, the cemetery authorities sent for the police, who put an abrupt stop to the impromptu investigation. Ware, Jones, and Maddox were indicted by the Fulton County Grand Jury shortly afterwards. The indictment charging violation of Section 408 of the State Penal Code A novel defense was outlined, the contention being that the caskets alleged to be stolen were really rented.
The suggestion of this remarkable defense, involving the psychology of the fine funeral, was made by one of the gravediggers arrested with Ware. That he wasn't stealing those caskets. He said he had just rented them to the families so they could make a big show of having a fine funeral. He said his customers had agreed to let him put the bodies in plain boxes afterward and take back the expensive caskets so he could rent them to other people. The caskets were removed under cover of darkness, it was explained, so that nobody would know of Ware's arrangement with his patrons. There was no indication of such an understanding, however, among the Negroes who had thronged Southview Cemetery when Ware's operations were being unofficially investigated.
Neither was there any evidence of rental agreements when his case came on for trial before the petit jury. A verdict of guilty was quickly arrived at, and the miscreant who had betrayed his patron's trust received a sentence of the extreme penalty provided by the statute, ten years imprisonment at hard labor. The third article in this absorbing series will appear in an early issue of Weird Tales.
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3 03 - No. 3: The Magic Mirror Murders 29:37
Number Three. The Magic Mirror Murders.
We gets Barbara, the blacksmith of the little Bavarian hamlet of Loisher Reith, greeted the daughter of Peter Reisinger. We gets Lanzmann. "'Figets, Landsman,' pretty Barbara replied from her doorstep. "'Think your young cloud boats ill weather this morning?' The blacksmith studied a fleck of cotton wool vapor riding languidly across the blue German sky, then turned his smile on Barbara again. "'Nein,' he opined. "'Tis but a wind cloud. But why so anxious about the weather? Is it to a picnic party, you go?' All decked in your pretties. Barbara brushed the tip of her nose with a tiny cluster of cornflowers plucked from her father's dooryard. Indeed, as the blacksmith had said, she was dressed in her finest.
A cloth skirt, a neat little jacket of the same material, a blouse of coarse linen spotlessly laundered, pinch-back earrings, even stockings of white cotton and leather shoes were among her morning finery. And by this last it might be known she was wearing the very best her wardrobe afforded. For poverty rode heavily on the shoulders of the Bavarian peasantry in 1807, and both men and women went barefoot or shod with wood except upon gala occasions. Stockings and leather shoes were worn only to mass in celebration of the king's birthday, or other extraordinary fits. The girl smiled coquettishly at her neighbor. Perhaps I go to look for work? "'Perhaps to seek a husband who knows?' she answered.
"'But,' the blacksmith began, then broke off with a puzzled shake of his head. The ways of young folks were beyond him. He resumed his way toward his forge while Barbara set out in the opposite direction along the hamlet's single street. When the day's work was done, the blacksmith returned to his home in his evening meal of black bread and pea soup. But Barbara did not return that night. Barbara did not return at all." It was as if she had walked over the rim of the earth at the horizon. Her parents made frantic inquiries for her. Weeks and months went by, but no one could tell them of her whereabouts. Village heads were shaken, dire surmises of her fate were uttered by local Weizekers, and her disappearance had taken its place in neighborhood tradition.
Almost when gossip was suddenly revived by the disappearance of Catherine Seidel, a bell of the neighboring community of Regendorf. Early in January 1808, Catherine had set out from her father's house, also dressed in the best clothes she'd possessed. Like Barbara, she answered questions concerning her destination evasively. And like Barbara, she seemed to vanish like a smoke wreath from her grandsire's pipe. She was gone, and no one could, or would, give any news of her. Matters might have simmered down in her case, as in that of Barbara Riesinger. Had it not been that Catherine's elder sister, Walburga Seidel, was a spinster of more than ordinary firmness of purpose.
While others shrugged their shoulders over Catherine's disappearance, some even hinting the path she had taken led to the sort of ease purchased with shame. Walburga insisted her little sister was the victim of foul play. So vehemently did she assert this belief to all she talked with, that the neighbors began to look upon her with a sort of tolerant pity. One day early in the spring of 1808, Walburgo was passing through the public market of Regendorf, when she espied with amazement a bit of cloth she recognized as coming from the skirt. Catherine had worn the morning she left home. Entering the shop, she excitedly demanded whence the cloth came. After a moment's hesitation, the Hebrew proprietor of the place informed her he had bought the goods from a certain Frau Bichel, wife of Andrew Bichel, a day laborer who lived nearby.
He volunteered the further information that Frau Bichel was one of his regular customers, trading cloth and trinkets for goods, and often selling him garments or cloth remnants for cash. Though this offered no real evidence to support her suspicions, Walburga felt more convinced than ever that her sister had been murdered or spirited away, and determined to find what part Bichel had played in the mystery. With greater cunning than might have been expected from one of her station in life, she went not directly to Bichel's house, But to the neighborhood in which he lived. Pretending to be in search of work, she interviewed every household in the vicinity of the Beechel home, bringing in the Beechel family incidentally in her conversation, and adding together such scraps of information as different neighbors let drop.
That night she reviewed the result of her work, and found herself in possession of the following facts and rumors. Andrew Beechel, a day laborer and the son of a day laborer, was about 48 years old. Because of his indolence, he was usually out of employment. And the small vegetable garden before his house was more productive of weeds than any other crop. About a year before, however, his fortunes had suddenly taken a turn for the better. He had in some way secured a couple of pigs, a goat, and several geese, and had been heard to boast of a contemplated purchase of a cow. None of the neighbors could account for this sudden prosperity, since Beechel had been, if possible, lazier since his fortunes began to mend than before.
His clothing and that of his wife was noticeably better than formerly, and disregarding the usual custom of having all his garments made at home, he had fallen to patronizing a nearby tailor, he supplying the materials, while the tailor fashioned the garments. Beachel was noted for his good nature, or rather for his lack of aggressiveness, in former days having permitted himself to be bested in every encounter, whether physical or verbal, rather than defend himself. He was known for a coward, both physical and moral, always seeking to ingratiate himself with those he met, and resorting to the most servile flattery in order to secure the barest toleration from his acquaintances.
Of late, he had achieved greater esteem among a certain element of the locality, since he had shown a willingness to buy beer for whoever would consent to drink with him at the inn. It must be remembered that fiscal conditions in the Germany of that day were as stringent as those of the post-war period. Only the pressure was from exactly the opposite direction.
In the disorganization following the World War, the Republic suffered from an inflated currency, literally from too much money. In 1808, poverty was due to lack of money of any sort, and a few pence, secured by the sale of articles of little intrinsic worth, might easily raise a peasant to a position far above that of his struggling neighbors, whose whole time was occupied in securing the barest necessities of life.
Bearing this in mind, we can realize how articles of practically no value, provided they could be obtained without cost, might enable a poverty-crushed German to outdistance his fellows. A floating log is valueless to the man on shore. To the spent swimmer, it may mean salvation. While Burgess Seidel was aware of all this, a lifetime of poverty had impressed her with a very definite appreciation of values, even the value of a piece of secondhand clothing. And her sister had worn an entire outfit of new clothing, besides several articles of cheap jewelry, on the day she disappeared. While Berga pondered the information she had gleaned for several days before she again sought the neighborhood where Bitchel lived.
A few guarded inquiries disclosed the name of the tailor Bitchel patronized. She located a shop and, pretending faintness from the heat, it was early May, went in and begged a drink of water. While the tradesman fetched her a cup, she inspected his shop and suddenly started forward in her seat. Upon a hook ready for delivery hung a waistcoat, and it was made of cloth such as her vanished sister had worn for a cloak when last seen. "'Danke schon,' she told the tailor. Draining the dipper, he handed her. Then as she rose to leave, she turned, surveying his wares carelessly. "'That waistcoat,' she said, pointing to the garment which had set her pulses racing. "'It is a pretty thing. You make it for some graf, some great gentleman, no?' "'Nein,' laughed the tailor, shaking his head.
"'No great gentleman comes to this shop. I make it for a neighbor, one Herr Pichel.' "'Yes, it is pretty, is it not?' he added, stroking the soft cloth. "'Almost, I think, too pretty for man's wear. "'T'would be better in a lady's coat, not.' "'Ja, ja,' ejaculated Walburgo. Chokingly, as she stumbled from the astonished tailor's place, "'Yes, yes, for a lady's cloak to be sure,' and she burst into peals of hysterical laughter.
"'Oh, sister, dear little sister,' she sobbed as she half-walked, half-ran along the dusty road toward Beechel's house. "'Someone has done you an injury, but Walburga will find out. Walburga will never rest till she has found you,' she clenched her work-worn hands in frenzy, "'and if they have dared to harm you, oh, God, it would be better for them had they never seen the sun.'" A few minutes' hurried walk brought her to Beechel's door, upon which she hammered unceremoniously. Beechel himself answered her summons, smiling pleasantly.
"'You wish to see me?' He inquired politely. Wretch! Walburga cried. My sister, my little sister, Catherine! What have you done with her? Beechel's pale features remained politely inquiring. Not the tremor of a muscle betrayed her words had touched an uneasy conscience. Catherine? He repeated as though puzzled. What Catherine? I know many young ladies by that name. Choking with emotion, Walburga declared herself the sister of the vanished Catherine Seidel. And again demanded an account of her sister. Beechel heard her through, then repeated his declaration of innocence. He knew no Catherine Seidel, he insisted. Never remembered having known a girl by that name. The Fraulein was mistaken. She was excited.
The heat, perhaps. Would not the Fraulein enter and partake of a cup of goat's milk? It had a very soothing effect on those affected by the unseasonable spring heat. So sincere he seemed, and so genuinely anxious to help her, that Walburga's suspicions were almost disarmed. But there was the evidence of the piece of cloth in the market stall, and the new waistcoat at the tailor's. Walburga left the Beechel home and sought the Untersuchungsrichter, or provincial magistrate. The police system of Bavaria at that time was decidedly defective. Indeed, as we understand the term today, there was practically none. Each village had its constable or police officer whose duties were more of a supervisory than a police nature.
He seldom, if ever, patrolled the streets, nor did his authority extend beyond the impounding of misdemeanance. In addition to these purely local and inefficient officers, there was the gendarmerie, or military police, whose duties were twofold, the protection of the government from political offenders, and the enforcement of the magistrates' mandates. In this latter duty, which was wholly subordinate to that of arresting political enemies of the Crown, they acted almost as our modern bailiffs or United States Marshals, not attempting action on their own initiative, but waiting until the direction of the magistrate. A certificate of suspicion from the examining judge was necessary to set the police machinery in motion, as a warrant from a U.S.
commissioner or judge is required before lawful search and seizure may be made in this country. But slow-moving and inadequate, as the Bavarian Gendarmerie of a century ago was, it possessed the German characteristic of thoroughness. And once a magistrate's order was handed them, the officer kept at their task till they had some definite report to make. With painstaking care, the gendarmes interrogated every resident within a mile of Bichel's home, making voluminous notes of the answers they received. Their investigation began on May 19th, 1808. By nightfall, they had taken testimony from every man, woman, and child in Beechel's neighborhood, and had gleaned one fact of prime importance. Several young girls had gone to Beechel's house to see their fortunes in a glass, and though several neighbors had testified to this, not one could be found who could say he had seen one of the girls since.
In the forenoon of May 20th, two sergeants of police went to Beechel's house. He was gone to a nearby fair where goods of all descriptions, including second-hand clothing, were bought and sold. The officers walked around the house inspecting the outbuildings, glanced at the garden, and returned to the doorstep. Lighting their porcelain pipes, they seated themselves in the shade. Beechel must return sometime. Everyone came home sooner or later. Life was relatively long, and a day of waiting mattered little. Besides, sitting in the shade was vastly preferable to marching over miles of dusty road to the fair. A nervously energetic Latin, or efficient Anglo-Saxon policeman, would have exhibited symptoms of hydrophobia at sight of such tactics.
But the Germans understood German psychology. At nightfall, Beechel returned, his pockets clinking with copper and silver, the proceeds of his days trading. And the sergeants matter-of-factly placed him under arrest. There was no haste in the proceedings. Beechel was permitted thirty-six hours in solitary confinement to allow his conscience to begin its work, then summoned before the examining judge. This official kept the prisoner waiting beside his table for several minutes while he pretended to be busily examining some papers. At length he looked up, staring at Beechel as though he had been some novel sort of animal. Do you know the reason for your arrest, Andrew Beechel? He asked at length.
Nein, mein Herr, replied the prisoner with a servile bow. So? The magistrate raised his eyebrows. You do not, very well. He motioned to a gendarme, and Beechel was conducted back to his solitary cell.
Another day and night elapsed, and Beechel was again led into the magistrate's presence.
Andrew Beechel, said the judge, tell me why you are arrested. Mein Herr, replied Beechel, upon the Holy Cross I cannot imagine. Then you must have a few days of rest and quiet to stimulate your imagination, the magistrate answered. There were no such things as writs of habeas corpus in Bavaria. When a prisoner refused to talk, he was lodged in solitary confinement until his tongue loosened. Andrew Beechel spent a week more in his cell, during which he heard no voice, and saw no human face, even his food being passed to him through a small opening in the dungeon door, which permitted him no sight of his jailers. Seven days' meditation eroded Bichel's resolution. The next time he faced the judge, he was ready to talk.
As before, the magistrate asked, "'Andrew Bichel, do you know why you were arrested?' "'Yes, mein Herr,' answered the prisoner. "'It is in connection with the disappearance of Catherine Seidel.' "'And Barbara Riesinger?' "'What of her?' supplemented the judge. "'Yes, Your Worship,' faltered Bichel. And Barbara Reisinger, too.
Where are they? What did you do with them? the magistrate demanded. Oh, my ne'er, the trembling wretch protested. I did nothing with them, on the holy tree, by the beard of St. Andrew, my patron. I did them no injury. They came to me. They pestered me to get them their fortunes, told I knew a man—no, your excellence, I do not know his name, nor whence he comes. I knew a certain man who can divine the future. This man, he has but one eye, your exaltedness, and is also plagued to the goiter. This man came to my poor house and showed these misguided girls their future husbands in the peep-show." A peep-show?" echoed the judge. What kind of peep-show?" A crystal ball, your nobleness." A crystal ball.
Did you not say it was a peep-show? Yes, your honorableness, but I meant a crystal ball such as Eastern Fakir's use." What you know of Eastern Fakirs, Andrew Beachel? Your Worship, I have read. Andrew Beachel interrupted the magistrate. I can read that you are an unconscionable liar. Back to your cell, rogue. You will be questioned and on when you are ready to tell the truth. Meantime, the gendarmes had not been idle. Accompanied by a squad of men, a sergeant had searched the Beachel homestead from roof-tree to cellar. In an upper room, concealed beneath a heap of trash, two roomy chests had been discovered. When the padlocks on their lids were forced, they were found literally crammed with articles of feminine apparel.
Linens, skirts, jackets, cloaks, leather shoes, stockings, bits of cheap jewelry like that worn by peasant bells, combs, undergarments, enough clothing to have outfitted a small village of middle-class peasant girls was recovered from these trunks. Most important to the prosecution, articles definitely identified as having been worn by Barbara Ressinger. The judge ordered a careful inventory made of these things, and commanded the searchers to continue their work. Scarcely believing more evidence would be unearthed, the police proceeded to make a cursory investigation of the land and outbuildings without bringing anything more to light. But one of them was suddenly struck with the idea of utilizing a four-footed assistant.
A hunting dog was secured and turned loose in the grounds. The animal seemed at fault for some time, but when one of the officers led him into the dark shed at the rear of the lot, he betrayed increased interest. Against the shed's rear wall was stacked a pile of manure, the pungent ammonia gas it gave off, obscuring all other odors which reached the men's noses. But the dog was not to be thus fooled. He attacked the base of the pile with his four paws, dug tentatively a moment, Then abruptly seated himself, pointed his muzzle skyward, and emitted a dismal, long, drawn-out howl. Country bred, the policemen recognized the sound. Only too often they had heard dogs give vent to the death cry when members of their master's family had died.
"'Her Gott!' cried one of the men while another crossed himself piously. A digging fork was brought, and the police attacked the dung heap. Beneath a litter of straw quite near the surface, the lower half of a woman's body was found. The clay soil, in combination with the straw and the manure which shut away the air, had completely foiled the murderer's purpose. Instead of decomposing, the flesh was almost perfectly preserved, though saponification had taken place to some extent. Feverishly now, the police dug. A torso, the arms, finally a severed head, were brought to light. Catherine Seidel was found. For several days, the officers prosecuted their search. Each succeeding excavation revealing a fresh villainy.
Poor vain little Barbara Reisinger was taken from the unconsecrated grave where she had lain nearly a year, and the bodies of other girls not reported to the authorities were brought forth to keep her company. But the most ghastly phase of this terrible case appeared when surgeons summoned to view the bodies handed in their reports. In every case, the women's throats bore evidence of wounds, but in no instance were these wounds sufficient to have caused immediate death. The opinion of the doctors was that the women had been dismembered while still alive. The preliminary evidence secured the examination of Andrew Beechel began. Under the criminal code that enforced in Bavaria, there were no rules of evidence as common law lawyers know them.
Every fact germane to the case in hand was to be elicited. The accused was not permitted to face his accusers, nor was he permitted to refuse to testify against himself. The Untersuchung's The RAC was a criminal court of the district, and the RAC was a criminal court of the district. Prisoners might not be tortured into confession, the RAC having been formally abolished by law in 1806, but they were held in close confinement during the entire period of their examination, which sometimes lasted for months. The science of psychoanalysis had not been dreamed of in those days, yet something closely akin to it obtained in the Bavarian courts. The examining magistrate would ask the prisoner innumerable questions, many of them having only the most remote bearing on the case, yet at intervals there would be sandwiched in questions of the utmost importance.
Questions which, coming amid irrelevant queries, might easily startle the accused into a damaging admission. All questions and answers were reduced to writing by a notary, and any unusual length of time taken by the accused in answering a given question, his demeanor at the propounding of questions calculated to elicit damaging replies, and similar facts were also noted in the minutes of the examination. Footnote. It is to this faithful noting of the most minute details in the transcripts of these criminal examinations that we owe our ability to record practically all the important incidents In trials held more than a century ago, editor. End footnote. Despite his declared intention of telling all, Beechel fenced skillfully with the judge for several days, contradicting himself a dozen times at each session, but inevitably being led to an admission of his guilt.
At length, the magistrate asked him, Did you not pretend to have a magic mirror in your possession, a mirror in which young women might see their future husbands? Beechel was observed to change color at this, but stoutly denied it. The judge, unhurried, confident his questions would bring out the truth, continued at intervals to ask, Tell us of your magic mirror, Andrew Beechel. Or, Why did you pretend to have a magic mirror? Persistence at last prevailed. Worn out with constant questioning, his solitary confinement between court sessions making him a prey to his accusing conscience, Beechel at length broke down and confessed. He had let it be noised about among the peasant girls, he said, that he possessed a magic mirror in which any girl looking would see her future bridegroom.
And to sweeten the bait for the silly flies he purported catching in his web, he also said he would accept no fee for a look at this marvelous glass. But she who would see its secrets must come secretly, otherwise the charm would be broken, and she must come dressed in her best, as she would wish to appear when first beholding her future husband.
His plan succeeded with shameless ease, so fast the girls applied that he had to turn some away for fear of conflicting engagements. The procedure was the same in each case. The victim was shown a piece of board about which a towel had been wrapped. This was the magic mirror. When the wrappings were removed, Beechel assured his dupe. The future bridegroom would stand revealed, but first he must pronounce an incantation and the girl must help him. With her own pocket-handkerchief, he bandaged her eyes, binding her hands behind her back with a piece of packing thread. Then, standing before the smiling girl, he pronounced these words, "'Maiden, behold thy bridegroom! His name is Death!' So saying, he struck her in the throat with a butcher knife he had concealed in his sleeve.
A basin was ready. He eased the terrified girl to the floor, placing the vessel where it would catch the blood from her wound. Lest her clothes be stained and so rendered unsaleable. For it was for their clothing and the few tawdry trinkets that he had murdered all these innocent credulous girls. When the victim was exhausted, he undressed her, folded her clothes up neatly, ready to be packed in his treasure chests upstairs, and proceeded leisurely to dismember and bury her body. The astounded judge asked, But why did you anatomize them before they were dead? To this, Beechel made the astonishing reply. Your Excellence, they squirmed. It was delightful. When the tedious process of collecting all available evidence at length came to an end, the written report of Beechel's case, comprising several volumes of closely written German script, was certified to the Central Criminal Court by the examining judge.
Weary lawyers with endless tongues had no opportunity to address the court under the Bavarian Criminal Code. The defendant's legal advisor was allowed to read the transcript of testimony taken before the examining judge, then to prepare a written defense of his client. In this brief, he might base his defense on either the law or the facts, or both, and might use as much space as he deemed necessary, but he might not appear in person before the court. Thus it was that many an advocate won fame as a criminal practitioner, yet had never seen the judges whose decisions his pleas swayed. Beechel's counsel did the best he could with the handicap under which he labored, and the Central Criminal Court doubtless read his learned defense attentively.
But the result of the case was foregone.
On February 4, 1809, nearly a year after his arrest, Andrew Beechel was led into court to hear his sentence. It was an impressive scene, the judges, in their robes of office, trimmed with ermine, the royal fur and token of their right to dispense the king's justice, sat before a long table of aged, darkened oak, raised three steps above the courtroom floor. Behind them, and before the doors and windows of the hall, stood halberdiers, in coats of green and gold, the sunlight glinting on the polished heads of their weapons. The official justicer, the headsman, stood beside the steps leading to the judge's table. A crowd had gathered to hear sentence pronounced, and broke into murmurs of suppressed rage as two stalwart jailers led the prisoner before the judges.
The clamor of halberd butts on the floor brought instant silence, for the halberdiers were not slow to rap for order on the heads of the rabble if their first admonition to silence went unheeded. Beechel halted before the judge's table, and the president of the court rose, facing him. In one hand he held a parchment scroll. Before him on the table lay a light wand of dried willow. The prisoner's pale face went a shade whiter as he beheld this, for well he knew what the wand portended. A pause. The judge unrolled his parchment and read the sentence.
That he there be broken on the wheel from the feet upwards, without the previous mercy stroke, and that his body be afterwards exposed on the wheel as a warning to evildoers. As he finished, the President picked up the willow wand, snapped it in two, and cast the pieces at Beechel's feet. This was to signify that, as the wood was separated in two parts, so should the condemned man's soul and body be severed in the furtherance of the King's justice. Almost insane with terror, Bichel was dragged from the courtroom, his vain pleas for mercy ringing fainter and fainter till the closing of his dungeon door shut them off completely. Well, he knew the fate awaiting him. He would be tied against the great cartwheel so that he hung like a fly caught in the web of a giant spider.
Then with a heavy sledgehammer, the brawny executioner would rain blow after blow upon him. Breaking the bones of his legs and arms, his ribs, finally crushing his skull. In ordinary cases, the headsman would have given him the blow on the head first, so that the others would have been but savage mutilation of his dead body. But his sentence had expressly provided that he should be broken on the wheel from the feet upwards without the customary mercy stroke. He would die slowly, horribly. The thought drove him shrieking against the unyielding door of his cell, striking it with his fists, crying aloud for mercy, he who had shown no pity to the girls whose finery he coveted.
Next morning, when they led him out to die, he gave a great shout of joy as he beheld his executioner. For that grim official leaned upon the handle of a great sword, not on the helm of his terrible hammer. The court had reconsidered its decision during the night. And commuted his sentence to death by beheading, saying, It is below the dignity of the state to vie with a criminal in cruelty. This is the third of a series of unusual articles that Seabury Quinn is writing for The Weird Tales. The fourth will be published in an early issue.
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4 04 - No. 4: Swiatek, the Beggar 19:15
Number 4. Sviantek, the Beggar.
The landlord of the Silver Axe was on the verge of nervous prostration. Half an hour before, a messenger had brought tidings of a great English milord whose coach had broken down a scant ten miles from the hamlet of Palomija. Even now the wealthy foreigner, and his servants, were making their way as best they could along the forest road, and the silver axe was the first inn they would pass on their journey to the town of Dabkow. The winter of 1848 had been cruel to the inhabitants of the lordship of Horkost in Austrian Galicia. The peasants who got their meager living by hewing down the tall fir trees and floating them down the Vistula to market. Had been sorely plagued by deep snows and frozen streams.
Disease and lack of fodder had depleted their small supply of livestock, and the taxes of the landed proprietors of whom they held their hovels and little garden patches had been heavier than the land. Now, When May had come to drive away the lingering frosts of winter, and the menfolk had gone to their summer work of resin collecting, came word of the wealthy Englander, dropped into the landlord's inn like the purses of the good St. Nicholas into the laps of the dowerless maidens, and there was not with which to prepare a feast for the unexpected guests. Chickens had perished on their roosts in the biting winter frosts. One of the pigs had died of the cholera. And the other had been taken by the imperial tax collector in lieu of unforthcoming coin.
Only the ducks remained. The ducks! That was the solution of the problem. The landlord would regal the Englishman with roast duck. "'Come, come,' he called to his bustling hossfrau. "'Make haste! Kill me our three ducks! We must have them roasted to a turn, with pickled fish and watercress, and the best of our wine for the rich Englander. Ah, it will be a meal fit for the table of a duke.' Doubtless our guest will reward us with a gold piece, mayhap too. Followed such an agonized squawking as never before was heard in all duckdom, as the landlady and her assistants ran a dignified and much scandalized drake to his doom. But of the slaughtered drake's harem, no sign was to be found. Search high, search low, no frightened quack gave testimony of a cowering duck hiding from the axe.
Time pressed. The Englishman drew nearer with every passing minute, and only one duck lay waiting to grace the table for the famished foreigner and his hungry servants. A trembling stableboy ran to tell the landlord. The landlord tore at his hair and beard, calling freely and impartially on all the red-and-black letter saints in the calendar to witness his misfortune. He also cursed the stableboy who brought him to evil tidings. But most of all, most horribly, most blasphemously, He cursed the unknown miscreant who had robbed him of his ducks, and of the profit he would have made from the Englishman. What misbegotten descendant of an unvirtuous wild pig would do this thing to me? The landlord questioned of the unanswering forest wind.
Who would steal from me? Do I not attend regularly at holy mass and give liberally to the poor? Do I ever turn beggars from my fire?
The landlord ceased his curses and put on his hat. The rehearsal of his charities had turned his thoughts upon beggars in general, and from mendicants in general his thoughts had turned upon the neighborhood beggar in particular. Scarcely a stone's throw from the silver axe stood the hut of Shwiantec, the beggar of Pulumja. Summer and winter this old man was to be seen squatting at the church door, his long white beard falling to his knees. As he held forth his wooden basin and whined, "'And alms for the love of Christ, kind friends. Give to the needy, and the Lord will reward you. Alms, alms for the love of God.' The landlord cherished no love for Sviantek. On more than one occasion he had caught him in the act of pilfering from the silver axe's none too plentifully stocked pantry, and on more occasions than one he had proof he had suspected him of thievery.
To be sure, who would have been more likely to make away with the so precious ducks than this whining mendicant?" Who, though strong and hardy as any man his age in the forest-ban circle of Tornow, preferred to eke out an existence on what he could beguile from the pockets of honest, laboring men. The landlord picked up the stout cudgel and set off for Sfiantek's hut. Has the rogue stolen my ducks? he muttered. I'll write the Eighth Commandment on his thievish hide with this. He brandished his club menacingly as he neared the beggar's door. The strong and savory odor of roasting flesh greeted his nostrils as he crept nearer. Svyantek the beggar, the man who lived without work, was preparing a meal of meat, while the great English my lord must go hungry, and the worthy landlord of the silver axe unrewarded.
"'Villain!' the landlord shouted, bursting through the door. "'I have caught thee, red-handed. I will teach thee to steal ducks from honest men while their guests cool their heels in hunger.' Svyantek stepped back. He was quickly from the fireplace over which he had been bending, at the same time stuffing some object about the size of a duck out of sight beneath his peasant's blouse. In a trice, the furious landlord had him by his venerable white beard, shaking him as a terrier does a rat. Back and forth the innkeeper shook the beggar, berating him as only a man whose good fortune has been suddenly snatched away can. The half-roasted piece of meat, which Sviantec had all this time clutched to his bosom beneath his loose blouse, slipped from his grasp and fell rolling and bumping to the floor.
It was the severed head of a fourteen-year-old girl. Horror paralyzed. The innkeeper stared at the grisly thing. Catching his breath in short panting sobs, Sviantec slunk into a corner of the hut. Next instant. With an inarticulate cry of mingled rage and fear, he made it the landlord, a butcher knife brandished in his skinny hand. The knife flashed forward for a stroke, but the swish of the innkeeper's oaken cudgel was followed by a heavy thud. Sviantek, the beggar, sank to the hut's earthen floor without a cry. As fast as terror-spurred messengers could summon them, gendarmes from Dabkow came to Pulumdja and hustled their prisoner to jail. All along the route, Svantec cried out like a trapped forest wolf, flinging himself repeatedly to the earth, and attempting suicide by trying to swallow clods of road clay and stones.
His captors choked these from his throat with no very gentle hands. Austrian gendarmes were never noted for tenderness toward their prisoners, and the already proven crime of this felon was not the sort to inspire them with an extra amount of courtesy. The prisoner was taken at once before the protocol. Committing magistrates court, and remanded to prison pending an investigation. Gendarmes were sent to search his dwelling, while others scoured the forest country for witnesses. In Austria, as in Germany, courts and prosecutors were not hampered by refinements of evidence, such as those in Vogue and common-law countries. Everything which had a bearing on the case in hand was eagerly sought and brought out at trial, regardless of whether it was hearsay or not.
Even rumor was listened to on the odd chance it would throw light on the case. The judges deciding what should receive consideration in influencing their decision. For this reason, the agents of justice brought into court a considerable number of witnesses whose stories, while inadmissible under British or American law, were nevertheless of great interest. The residents of the Lordship of Parkhost in the vicinity of Palomja were for the most part wretchedly poor. They were woodcutters who tilled small garden patches in the intervals between their logging work. Each held his house and farmlet by a sort of villain tenure. That is, he paid no money rental, but was bound to work a fixed number of days each year for his landlord.
The scheme of payment by labor, while it might at first glance seem the fairest treatment of people whose stock of cash was always scanty, was really one of the contributing causes of the peasant's poverty. Since the landlords invariably exacted labor from their tenants at times when the tenants' own crops were ripe for harvesting, or when the cutting of timber would prove most remunerative. Nevertheless, in spite of their poverty, the villagers had always a ready hand for those who besought their charity, and witnesses who had transacted business with Sviantec always to the latter's advantage were numerous. One of the first to testify at the hearing, was a peasant woman who, some two years before, had taken compassion on the old beggar as he crouched at the church door and bidden him come to her cottage for food.
He had at first appeared reluctant, asking her if she could not give him a copper instead, but when she charitably insisted on his sharing the Sunday meal with her and her good men, he assented. They pressed such food as they had upon him, but he seemed strangely lacking an appetite. While he ate a little bread, he turned from the meat pie they offered with what seemed to her like repugnance. After dinner, when the master of the house presented the beggar with a pipe of tobacco, he became more genial, recounting stories of his adventures upon the road and amusing the children with a few tricks of simple ledger mane. One child, a chubby little girl of nine or ten, attracted the old man's attention particularly.
She and Hec felt in his pocket and produced a ring consisting of a piece of colored glass set in lead foil. This he presented to the child, who ran off delighted to show her companions. "'Is that little maid your daughter?' he asked the housewife. "'No,' she answered. "'She is an orphan. There was a widow in this place who died, leaving the child and I have taken her into my family. One month more will not matter much, and the good God will bless us for a charity.'" "'Aye, aye,' agreed Shwiennik. "'The orphans and fatherless are ever under his particular care.' "'She's a good little thing and gives us no trouble,' the woman resumed. "'You go back to Palomija tonight?' "'I do,' the beggar answered.
Then as the little orphan ran up to him, "'Ah, you like the ring, little one? It is a beautiful thing, is it not? I found it under a big tree to the left of the churchyard. Who knows, there may be dozens more in the same spot.'" "'You must go there after dark has fallen, and turn around three times, then say, "'Zaboi! Look among the tree roots, and you will surely find more rings.'" "'Come!' screamed the delighted child to her playmates. "'Let us go look for rings!' "'Nay, nay,' Svantech cautioned. "'You must seek singly one at a time, or the charm will not work.'" The children scampered off to the wood, and Svantech flung his coat about his stooping shoulders. You may thank me for ridding you of the children's noise for a time, at least.
He laughed as he opened the door to leave. He left the cottage, walking rapidly, not going down the road but among the somber evergreens which reached nearly to the front door. An hour later the woodcutter's children returned out of breath with running. The little orphan girl was not with them. Vaguely, incoherently, as terrified children will, they told how she, braver than the rest, Had gone alone beneath the shadow of the fir tree where rings were to be found, how she called out the word Zaboi lustily, then how a startled scream had suddenly checked, like the ceasing of a nightbird's cry when the bullet strikes its mark. They told, too, of a monstrous form like that of a cloaked and bearded man, half-distinguished through the gloom, and of hurrying footsteps, sounding fainter and still more faintly through the underbrush.
It was a wolf. The woman said, crossing herself piously. The talk of the cloaked and bearded man she set down to childish imagination. Several schoolboys told how one of their companions, a boy named Peter, had loitered behind his fellows one day after school. They saw him leave the path. They thought they saw him talking with a man wearing a long cloak and having a white beard, though they could not be certain of this. One thing was sure. Peter was never seen again. A wealthy Russian Jew told of the loss of his servant maid, a girl of thirteen. One night she left his house on an errand. When she failed to return, he became uneasy and set out to look for her with a lantern. Her footprints were plainly marked in the light snow.
It could be seen where she left the road wandering into a copse of fir trees. Here other footprints, much larger and heavier, joined hers. For a time, the two trails went on together, then at a spot where the trees were so thick no snow had drifted down upon the brown carpet of pine needles. All trace of the girl and her companion was lost. At any rate, the girl was never seen again. The gendarmes, sent to search Suyantec's cottage, returned with staring eyes and bated breath. In a chest neatly trussed up like a fowl ready for the spit, they had found the legs and thighs of a half-grown girl. The child whose head Sviantec had attempted to hide when discovered by the landlord of the silver axe.
Beneath the earthen floor of the hut they had found caps and parts of clothing sufficient to account for thirteen children and a young woman. The witnesses disposed of, Sviantec was summoned before the magistrate. For a time he stood dumb before the court, not touched with remorse for his hideous crimes, but paralyzed with fear for himself. With the notes of the testimony before him, the magistrate commenced interrogating the prisoner. But wordless moans were the only replies his questions evoked. At last, by accident, the beggar's lips were opened. You must have been insane to commit these acts, the judge remarked. A crafty look, a gleam of hope, came into the prisoner's little eyes. For ignorant though he was, he knew the law forbore to punish those whose misdeeds were committed while insane.
Your Excellency has said no more than the truth, he replied. I was indeed a lunatic when I transgressed so terribly. But now, Your Excellency, I am restored. I pray you let me depart, hence my reason is returned, and I will sin no more. Tell us first how you came to do such savage and unchristian acts, prompted the judge. It is necessary that our records be complete before we dispose of the case. Disposing of a case was... A phrase capable of more than one interpretation. But dread of punishment and overwhelming hope of freedom led Svantec to place the most favorable construction on the words. Smiling amiably at the magistrate, stroking his patriarchal beard as he talked, he related one of the most amazing criminal histories ever heard in a court of law.
Three years before, during the bitter winter of 1846, he had been hastening through the forest to his cottage in Palomija. Just as the sun was setting, the frost, which set in early in autumn, had held steady, and the countryside had suffered greatly. Responses to his whine for alms had been few and small, and he was near to perishing with cold and hunger. As he neared the village he came upon the still glowing embers of a small Jewish tavern which had burned down that morning, and paused to warm himself beside the smoldering ruins. Creeping nearer for extra warmth, He noticed the charred remains of the tavern's keeper, who had perished in the flames. The scent inside of the roasted flesh so worked upon his hunger that he was unable to resist tearing off a bit of flesh and tasting it.
As the horrid morsel passed his lips, he became, to quote his own words, "...as it were a ravening wolf." Rending, tearing, even growling in his throat like a brute beast, he satisfied his hunger. Then stuffed his beggar's pouch with material for another horrible repast. Suddenly the enormity of his act struck him. Flinging the pouch with its grisly load from him, he ran pell-mell down the road until exhaustion compelled him to stop. As he sat upon a wayside stone regaining his breath, the desire for another meal like the revolting one he had just completed began to steal over him like a drunkard's craving for drink. Battling with his conscience, yet yielding, he retraced his steps, recovered his pouch, and hastened home.
From that night he had never eaten any other meat. Bread and vegetables he had accepted from kindly, disposed peasants who pitied him. But their offers of meat filled him with an almost uncontrollable revulsion. The little orphan girl, whose disappearance had been testified to by her foster parents, was his first victim. He had killed and eaten her as unconcernedly as another peasant would have butchered a calf or pig. Freely, as the magistrate questioned him, he admitted murder after cold-blooded murder, and case after case of cannibalism. With a complacency which brought a shudder of horror to all who watched, he rolled back his sleeves and loosened to the collar of his blouse. That the court might see how sleek and fat he had grown upon his frightful meals.
And now, he concluded, looking expectantly at the magistrate, I have told you all, Your Excellency. Surely you will let me go? Inhuman monster, the judge replied. Out of your own mouth you have condemned yourself. No madman could have told his tale so reasonably. If there be any justice in the Empire of Austria, you shall die upon the scaffold, and the public executioner will hang his head in shame that his duties force him to lay hands on so vile a wretch as you. Screaming with terror, Svyantek was dragged back to his cell, for his terror-pawsied legs refused to bear his weight. Next morning... When the turnkey of the jail made his tour of inspection, he found that justice had been cheated. Svantec, the beggar, had hanged himself to the bars of his prison window.
This is the fourth article of a series that Seabury Quinn's writing for Weird Tales. The fifth will appear in an early issue.
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5 05 - No. 5: Mary Blandy 28:02
Number 5. Mary Blandy. Two dirty, unkempt urchins fought and struggled in the gutterway of Henley. The elder, a ragamuffin lad of thirteen or so, bore his antagonist to the kidney stone pavement. Pressed his knee upon the other's chest, and leaned forward, intent upon gouging the little fellow's eyes with thumb and forefinger. It was a trick he had learned from the bullies of the waterfront, a trick no decent English lad would stoop to. But this little alley rat was not a decent English lad. "'Help! Help!' screamed this smaller boy, fighting desperately to keep the sharp, unclean nails of his enemy from his eyes. There was a clatter of flying iron-ringed hooves against the paving flints. A shout of command to the older boy, and a tall, auburn-haired girl, slim and straight as a youth, flung herself from her pony, laying her riding crop mercilessly across the unfair fighter's shoulders.
Surprised by the sudden rear attack, the boy loosed his grip on his opponent's face and turned furiously to defend himself. He might as well have attempted to beat back the north wind. Right cut, left cut, back and forth, the girl swung her whip with the speed and skill that marked the practiced fencer. And the strength that tells of healthy young muscles grown strong and supple through systematic exercise. Thou churl, thou mean bass-varlet, thou Frenchman, she cried, still plying her whip. Dost fight with teeth and nails like a yowling gib-cat? Thou art not fit to breathe the air of England. She cut him again across his writhing shoulders. Hopelessly worsted in the combat, the boy drew off a safe distance and made the oldest gestures of insult the world knows.
That of the thumbed nose. You're gone, tomboy, he mocked from his zone of safety beyond the cut of her whip. Tomboy, tomboy. Live like a man and die like a man. Fighting girls and crowing hens always come to some bad ends. You'll die on the gallows, Mary Blandy, and all your father's money can't save you from it. Tomboy, tomboy, gallowsbird, tomboy. The girl made a threatening gesture, and he took refuge and flight, but his raucous taunt of tomboy, tomboy, gallowsbird, tomboy could be heard long after the patter of his broken-souled brogans no longer sounded in her ears. She tossed a copper for comfort to the lad she had rescued, remounted her pony, and rode slowly toward her father's house. Mary Blandy was the only child of Francis Blandy, a prominent solicitor of the town of Henley-on-the-Thames.
And because her father had wished a son and been disappointed with a daughter, he had done the next best thing and had Mary educated more like a young squire than a young noblewoman. At fourteen, she could ride, fence, and shoot as well as most boys several years her senior, and better than some, and her proficiency in the classics was a source of wonderment, and no little shame among parents with sons in the neighborhood. Many of these, piqued by the girl's extraordinary ability, contented themselves with saying such training and efficiency were unladylike.
So, at an early age, Mary Blandy suffered unpopularity among the parents of her boy acquaintances. In a few years, unpopularity was increased 100% for Mary, the young woman, proved herself as apt at all feminine accomplishments as Mary, the girl, had excelled in boyish pastimes. Her father's house became a rendezvous for the eligible young men of the vicinity. And many a womanly woman sat beside her lonesome fireside, while young professional men and officers from the nearby garrison made the rafters of the Blandy withdrawing room ring with their song and laughter. Of all the gay young redcoats who came to court lawyer Blandy's daughter, the most favored was Captain William Henry Cranston, an infantry officer brother to Lord Mark Care of Scotland, and possessor of a yearly income of 1,500 pounds, a very respectable fortune in those days.
Other suitors gradually drifted away, and in the course of time the captain's proposal of marriage was duly made, discussed by the Blandy family, and accepted. Happy in the possession of her gold-laced lover, Mary Blandy went about her preparations for marriage, choosing silks and taffetas for gowns with the nice discrimination that marked all her dealings, embroidering silk stockings for wear at the Grand Court levees she would attend when her precious sweetheart should at last be promoted, and ordered for duty at London Town. And between, whilst dreaming the long, long, open-eyed dreams every girl dreams during her engagement. Then one day came a letter for Lawyer Blandy from the North, Scotland.
It was signed by a young woman claiming to be Captain Cranston's wife, and what was more, the mother of his son. Mr. Blandy called his daughter to him, showed her the letter, and told her she must have nothing more to do with the captain. Shocked as she was, Mary still held faith in her lover. Believing the best of him, as all good women do of the men they love, declaring there was either some mistake or that the captain would be able to make a satisfactory explanation. This he was given an opportunity to do that very night, and when confronted with the documentary evidence of his perfidy, coolly denied any attachment with the letter's sender. When Lawyer Blandy, worldly wise from forty years' practice of a profession which has its tap-roots and human frailties, Declared he needed something more than the young officer's bare denial.
The captain asked a few days grace in which to marshal his defense, declaring he too would produce documentary evidence. Blandy was a just man, and acceded to the captain's request, but put him on his honor not to see or communicate with Mary until he showed the promised papers. A few days later, Captain Cranston appeared at the Blandy residence, with a letter bearing a signature identical with the one Mr. Blandy had received. This letter Addressed to the captain, admitted its sender was neither his wife nor his son's mother, and had no claim whatever upon Captain William Henry Cranston of His Majesty's army. The cancelled engagement was renewed, and preparations for the wedding were almost complete when a second letter came for Mr.
Blandy, imploring him not to let his daughter marry a scoundrel. The writer averred she had been led into making a denial of her wifehood by an urgent appeal from Captain Cranston. Telling her he had no intention of marrying Miss Blandy, having become engaged to her merely as a diversion. He had urged his wife to stultify herself because he had no chance of preferment in the service if it were known he was married, whereas if he could pass a single a few months longer he would surely be promoted, and would then acknowledge her as his wife and bring her to live with him. With womanly unselfishness she had agreed to write the letter he sought, but far from feeling proper gratitude of her sacrifice.
The unprincipled rogue had sent copies of her renunciation to her family, who thereupon turned her out of doors. She was reduced to starvation and prayed Mr. Blandy to release her husband from his engagement and restore him to her. To prove the truth of her claims, she enclosed the letter Cranston had written, asking her to sully her reputation for his sake, and declaring his engagement to marry a mere frivolous pastime. Such evidence could not be ignored, in spite of fervent protestations of innocence. Mr. Blandy sent the coxcomb captain about his business, and forbade his daughter on pain of disinheritance ever to see him or write to him again. But the love that laughs at locksmiths pays even less attention to parental commands, and though Mary dutifully forbore seeing the captain, she carried on a continual clandestine correspondence with him.
His earnest disavowals of all wrongdoing, his passionate declarations that he was the victim of a designing woman who sought to stand between him and happiness, Overbore Mary's customary keen judgment. In a short time, she ceased to think of him as a deceiver, and regarded him as a greatly wronged man. Once or twice she undertook to plead her lover's cause with her father, but her advances called forth such outbursts of temper from the indignant old gentleman that she ceased the attempts. Mary had not inherited her father's auburn hair and gray eyes without a fair share of his choleric disposition, and in the course of their arguments she repaid most of his irascible remarks. With compound interest, forgetting that keyholes are as fairly adapted to servants' ears and eyes as to keys.
Her father's adamant attitude and her lack of intimate acquaintances among the neighborhood young women forbade her telling her troubles to a disinterested listener. And with this safety vent denied her, she poured forth her woes to her companion in misery, Captain Cranston. That gentleman was absent on leave from his regiment visiting relatives in Scotland. And it may well be supposed his replies were far from urging her to meek obedience or patient waiting. Yet never did he counsel her to defy her parent openly, nor did he suggest a romantic elopement. Mr. Blandy possessed a considerable fortune and an unrelenting temper. If Mary contracted an unsanctioned marriage, she would certainly come dourless to her husband, and that eventuality was far from being included in Cranston's program.
In these circumstances he had recourse to a stratagem. Pretending great elation, he wrote his forlorn sweetheart that he had met a witch in the highlands of Scotland, a woman able to brew all sorts of potent droughts. She could concoct potions which begot instant and undying love in the breasts of those who took them. She could charm birds from their nests and snakes from their holes. Best of all, she could prepare a medicine, quite harmless to the taker, which could Mr. Blandy but be induced to swallow it. Would instantly turn his aversion to Captain Cranston's marriage with his daughter into a beaming consent. Mary knew the power of Scottish witches. Were they not beings condemned for sorcery at every court term?
And this particular witch, Cranston wrote, was more powerful in her magic, both black and white, than any yet condemned to hang. Trusting implicitly in her lover's promises, Mary joyfully awaited the coming of the packet which should bring her a happy issue out of all her afflictions. In due time, the drug arrived, marked, as had been agreed, powders for polishing Scottish pebbles. It was fine white, and when applied to the tongue with a moistened finger, had the faint, tart, sweet taste of apples. At her first opportunity, Mary mixed a generous portion of the medicine with her father's morning gruel, then waited expectantly for an abatement of his hatred of Captain Cranston, but instead of becoming complacent, Mr.
Blandy grew more testy than ever. Fearing the charm had lost some of its potency in the long trip from Scotland, Mary administered a still stronger dose the following morning. Shortly afterward, her father took to his bed with violent stomach pains. For a few days, Mary gave him no more of the powders, and his health began to mend gradually, but his temper remained as hot as formerly. Letters from the captain urged her to continue the treatment, and feeling sure her lack of success was due to insufficient dosage of the magic powder, She prepared a larger portion than ever, pouring it into the broth prescribed by the physician. Almost immediately, Mr. Blandy became desperately ill. The doctor was summoned post-haste, but declared his skill unavailing.
The patient was dying. Then, and not till then, was Mary's consciousness awakened to the enormity of her actions. At last, she realized the mysterious powders in her father's illness were cause and effect. Overcome with horror at the part she had unwittingly played, she rushed into her father's bedchamber. And falling to her knees, sobbed, "'Oh, Father, dear, dear Father, do what you will with me. Meet out any punishment you see fit, but forgive your foolish, love-blind child. Oh, my Father, my Father, forgive me, forgive me.'" In spite of the violent pain he suffered, Mr. Blandy lay calmly while she told her story, tears streaming down her cheeks, her words split with sobbing. At last he put forth his hand, laying it gently on his daughter's bowed head.
"'My dear,' he gasped. I forgive thee freely. Nay, more I bless thee, and pray God will bless thee. Now go, and say no more of this business, lest thou shouldst let drop some word to thine own prejudice. Farewell, my child, and may God pity and watch over thee." As the weeping girl groped her way blindly from the room, Lawyer Blandy muttered, "'Oh, the villain, the graceless villain, to come to my house, eat at my table, and in return take away my life and ruin my daughter.' Beside herself with grief and remorse, Mary ran from the house, seeking solitude in which to weep away some of the anguish in her heart. At last, feeling she must see her father to implore his forgiveness once more before he died, she re-entered the house and sought the death chamber.
A strange man. Roughly dressed and armed with a heavy bludgeon, stood at the door. As she approached, he smiled malignantly at her. "'Tomboy,' he announced. "'Thou not into here. Thy devil's work is already done.' With a start, Mary recognized the bailiff. Though age had altered him, he still bore a strong resemblance to the gutter urchin she had thrashed years before for fighting with his nails like a yowling gib cat. And at his repetition of the epithet, Tomboy, she remembered his shouted prophecy in the streets of Henley. You'll die on the gallows, Mary Blandy. Now he was a hanger-on at the jail, a thief-taker, servant to the constable. Tomboy, his taunt of years ago, came back to her. Gallows-bird Tomboy.
She had been a girl of fourteen when the dirty street Arab had called her that. Now... She leaned weakly against the wall for support, closing her eyes in hopeless misery. Tomboy, tomboy, gallowsbird, tomboy. The words seemed beating a rhythm in her pulses. A hand fell on her shoulder. Mary Blandy in the name of our Lord the King. She was under arrest. Her trial for Paraside was held at Oxford on March 3rd, 1852. Among the witnesses for the Crown were her servants, all of whom testified to the heated debate she had with her father over Captain Cranston. Not one, however, could be made to say she had shown any evidence of harboring a grudge. On the contrary, all the testimony showed that her anger evaporated almost as soon as it boiled.
While England today enjoys what it is, perhaps, the best system of criminal procedure in the world, a system under which speedy results are achieved and few, if any, innocent persons suffer injustice, she was just emerging from the Dark Ages, in which to be accused of crime was almost tantamount to being convicted. When Mary Blandy was called to the bar, persons accused of felony were permitted counsel, it is true, but only to a limited extent. Their lawyers might advise them on matters of law, but though the Crown was numerously and ably represented by trial lawyers, counsel for the accused might neither examine witnesses for the defense, cross-examine witnesses of the prosecution, nor advise their clients respecting examination of witnesses or any other matter of fact.
This might not seem so great a hardship at first glance, but when it is remembered that a trial consists merely of measuring facts developed in evidence by the yardstick of the law, it will be seen that for one untrained in the law to develop a proper legal defense from the testimony of his witnesses, or to break down the prosecution's case in law by astute cross-examination, was almost an impossibility. Add to this the fact that while the Crown's lawyers might address the court and jury at length, The defendant's counsel might not be heard in argument, and the hopelessness of the accused's plight may be realized. To offset the inability of the defendant to be heard through counsel, the theory that the judge himself was charged with the protection of the defendant's rights was laid down, but only too often in those days this theory was no more than a legal fiction, a grim jest at the prisoner's expense.
The indictment for murder covered several parchment sheets, and charged that Mary Blandy, spinster, Not having the fear of God before her eyes, did wickedly, willfully, maliciously, and of her deliberate and premeditated malice, feloniously kill and murder her father, the said Francis Blandy, of the town of Henley, Afors said, against the form of the statute, in such case made and provided and against the dignity of our lord the king. "'How are you betrayed, Mary Blandy?' asked the court's clerk when he had finished reading the interminable hodgepodge of legal verbiage. Accusing her of murder. By God and by my country, the girl replied, using the prescribed formula which signified she desired trial by jury.
Twelve residents of the vicinity were sworn well and truly to try, and a true deliverance made between our Lord and King and Mary Blandy's spinster, and the trial commenced. It lasted eleven consecutive hours. When all the Crown's witnesses had been examined, No testimony was offered by the defense. And the attorney general had harangued the jury, charging Mary Blandy with the foulest of crimes next to treason known to the law. The judge nodded to the girl. Her time to speak had come. Bewildered by the unfamiliar surroundings, denounced by the very servants of her father's house, and with not one friendly eye upon her in all that crowded courtroom, an inexperienced girl rose to plead for her life.
An eyewitness of the trial describes her as being above medium height, erect and proud and bearing, and with calm eyes and unruffled brow. She was plainly but decently dressed in a gown of dark woolen stuff, with white linen collar and wristbands. Her voice, though low, was distinct, firm, and unhurried, and her wide gray eyes never left a judge's face as she spoke. Among all the addresses delivered in court since man first sat in judgment on man, Mary Blandy's surely deserves high rank for strength and simple eloquence. The speech attributed to Robert Emmett had long been held a masterpiece of forensic oratory. But Emmett was a practiced orator, and fired with patriotism. Mary Blandy had never addressed a public gathering in her life, and was on the point of exhaustion at the end of eleven hours of denunciation, an ordeal sufficient to break the spirit of a strongman.
My lord. She began dropping a courtesy to the court. It is mortally impossible for me to detail to you all the hardships I have endured. But, worst of all, I have been aspersed in my character. In the first place, it has been said I spoke ill of my father, that I cursed him. That is entirely false. Sometimes little family affairs have happened, and we did not speak as kindly to each other as I could have wished. I own I am passionate, my lord. And in my passion I may have dropped some hard words. But your lordship must have noticed what great care has been taken to recollect every word I have said which could be applied to my disadvantage. These are hardships, my lord, such as you yourself must allow to be so.
It has been said, too, that I endeavoured to make my escape. Your lordship will judge the difficulties I laboured under. I lost my father. I was accused of being his murderess. I was not allowed to go near him. I was forsaken by my friends, affronted by the mob, insulted by my servants. Although I begged to have the liberty to listen at the door when he died, I was not allowed it. My keys were taken from me, my shoe-buckles and garters, too, to prevent my making away with myself, as though I were the most abandoned creature. What could I do, my lord? Was this a condition in which to attempt an escape? When I was arrested in my home, I was locked up for fifteen hours without a maid to attend the decencies of my sex.
I was sent to jail, and the High Sheriff told me he must put an iron on me. A little later he came in and said he must put a still heavier iron on my ankles until my day in court arrived. I was chained like a savage beast, my lord. Newspapers and balladmongers have made free with my reputation. I have been represented as the most abandoned of my sex, and prejudiced in the eyes of the world. I submit myself to your lordship and to the worthy jury. I do assure you, as I am answered at the great tribunal, where I am some day to appear, I am entirely innocent of my father's death. I really thought the powder was an innocent, inoffensive thing, and I gave it to him to procure his love. It has been mentioned, I should say, that I have been ruined.
My lord, in the sense the witnesses mean I have not. I am virtuous. But when a young girl loses her character... Is not that her ruin? Is it not ruining my character to have this vile charge of murder laid upon me? Whatever may be the events of this trial, my lord, I am already ruined most effectually, and beyond the hope of redemption. Carefully and painstakingly, the judge instructed the jury in the legal definitions of murder in the first degree, murder in the second degree, manslaughter, and innocence. He seems to have been a just man who took his duty to conserve the prisoner's legal rights seriously.
The instructions done, the court rose, waiting the jury's retirement, but no movement came from the jury box. The clerk frowned in annoyance. A bailiff motioned to the jury's foreman to retire, but he was answered by a stubborn shake of the head. "'Gentlemen of the jury,' exclaimed the clerk, "'have you agreed upon a verdict?' He is prepared to suggest sarcastically that they retire and deliberate when the foreman answered in the negative. He was not given the opportunity.
"'We have,' replied the foreman. "'Prisoner, look on the jury. Jury behold the prisoner,' cried the clerk mechanically. Then, as Mary Blandy rose and regarded the men who held her fate, the clerk continued, "'Gentlemen of the jury, how do you find the prisoner at the bar, guilty or not guilty?' Guilty, the foreman spoke the words of doom gruffly.
Mary Blandy's unpopularity in the neighborhood had paid its final dividend. Your verdict is that you find the prisoner at the bar guilty of murder in the first degree? So say all of you? The clerk intoned, following the ritual of all criminal trials. Again, the jurors nodded solemnly. Bring me my cap, the judge ordered. An attendant fetched a small black silk cap, which the judge fitted over his full-bottomed judicial wig. No sentence of death could be pronounced in an English court unless the judge wore this symbol of mourning. The symbolism of the black cap in English courts was equivalent to the broken wand in German tribunals when the death sentence was given. Footnote. See Article III of this series, The Magic Mirror Murders.
End footnote. Briefly, the court congratulated Mary Blandy on having had a fair and impartial trial by a jury of her peers, and ordered that she be hanged by the neck until death on the sixth of the following month. As legal form prescribed, he ended the sentence with the prayer that God would have mercy on her soul. The girl received her sentence calmly, nor did she waste breath in vain pleas for mercy. She was not a lawyer's daughter for nothing. None knew better than she the inexorable course of British justice. During the thirty-three days of her imprisonment, Mary's conduct was marked by the utmost gentleness. Not once was she heard to protest against her fate, or to reproach the servants and former friends on whose testimony she had been condemned.
Poor girl, why should she cling to life? Her father was dead, and she condemned, in the world's opinion, as his murderess. Her lover had forsaken her. In all the world she had not a single friend or well-wisher. April 6th dawned bright and warm. Mary Blandy arrayed herself in a modish gown of black bombazine with a white kerchief about her throat. When the sheriff's men came to lead her to execution, she wished them a cheerful good morning. Executions in England in those days were publicly conducted, and the gallows on which criminals were hanged was not erected in the jail yard for each execution. It was kept standing in an open field, where its grim shadow was a constant reminder to evildoers.
And this field was nearly a mile from the jail where Mary Blandy was confined. A carriage was offered her, but she declined, saying she would enjoy the April sunshine as long as possible. So, accompanied by the officers and a clergyman, she set out upon her last journey afoot. Previous to leaving the jail, her wrists had been crossed and bound before her with black ribbons, a concession to her sex and gentility. And this mode of tying her hands permitted her to hold a prayer book before her. This was another courtesy, for condemned criminals' hands were customarily lashed behind their backs with a rope. The attending clergyman read the office appointed for executions in the Book of Common Prayer.
But Mary Blandy opened her book to the Psalter appointed for the sixth day of the month, and read from Psalm 32, Blessed is he whose unrighteousness is forgiven, and whose sin is covered. I said, I will confess my sins unto the Lord, and so thou hast forgavest the wickedness of my sin. Beneath the gibbet a stepladder, draped in black bunting, had been set up, and on this she mounted two rungs, saying, Gentlemen, I beseech you, hang me no higher for decency's sake. But the knotted noose swinging from the gallows' crossbar would not reach her where she stood, so she climbed to the ladder's top. A puff of wind caused the latter to sway slightly, and the poor girl cried out in terror of falling, raising her helpless bound hands to steady herself.
"'Fear ye not, tomboy,' called a hoarse voice from the group about the gallows. "'You'll fall clean to hell in a minute.' The chief constable turned and struck her tormentor such a heavy blow in the mouth that his lips bled. So her old enemy's last meeting with Mary Blandy was like his first, the occasion of a beating. When the rope had been adjusted, Mary raised her hands, drew her kerchief over her face, and stood a moment in silent prayer. Then she held her prayer book forward. This was the signal agreed upon between her and the sheriff. Two husky jail attendants heaved the ladder from beneath her, and Mary Blandy's slender body swung between earth and heaven. It was half an hour before they cut her down, for her weight was not great enough to break her neck.
And she strangled slowly while the great crowd of mean folk gathered to watch the execution, stood in hang-jawed amazement to see a woman fight so long for life. At one o'clock the following morning, she was carried by torchlight to the family vault at Henley, and with the rope that strangled her still about her slim white throat, buried beside the father for whose murder, rightly or wrongly, she was hanged. Diligent search was made for Captain Cranston, but the scoundrel had heard of Mary's arrest. And deserting, the army fled to France. For five years he lived a fugitive from justice, but the government took legal proceedings to attach the source of his income. At last, reduced to abject poverty, he died in a home for the indigent, kept by the church at Boulogne, and was buried in a nameless grave in foreign soil.
This is the fifth article of a series that Seabury Quinn is writing for Weird Tales. The sixth will appear in our next issue. It is entitled, The Werewolf of Saint-Bonneau. I describe some startling things that happened in France under the reign of Charles IX. Be sure to read this gripping article in The May Weird Tales.
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Number 6. The Werewolf of St. Bonneau. The long European twilight was dying, and darkness crept stealthily across the fields and pasture lands as three horsemen trotted slowly along the forest road of St. Bonneau. Two of the riders carried lutes slung across their shoulders. which marked them as trevoires, ballad-singers, while the third rode slightly to the rear, balancing a portmanteau on his saddle-bow, by which token he was labeled attendant of the other two. All three jangled long swords from their hips, for France was under the reign of the weak and vacillating Charles IX, and who would bring his life and property safely to his journey's end must need travel prepared to defend them. Swoons!
Swore one of the minstrels, drawing his scarlet cloak more tightly about his shoulders. But this abominable wood is colder than the tomb of the blessed Louis. With winter a good two moons away, methinks this chill in the air hath more o'er the devil's flavour than of God's good weather. His companion grunted a reply, and sunk his chin deeper in his tippet. The speaker looked right and left at the pale new moonlight sifting eerily between the tree trunks, and continued. A flagon of the Count's wine would like me well enough for now. What with a twenty-mile ride and no provender for the man and beast along the way, I'd sing of Alexander the Greek and Arthur the Briton from now till sun-up for a single stoop of wine and a morsel of bread and cheese."
Again an inarticulate reply from his mate. "'Steth,' the conversationally inclined singer went on, "'Didst ever see such a lonesome, uncanny place as this accursed bois? Methinks Monsieur Loup-Garroux himself would like no better place for his questing.' He flung back his bearded chin with a ringing laugh and began the opening lines of Bisque-Lavere in a deep baritone. The poem, one of France's oldest, dealt with the multitudinous herd not yet made fast in Hell. The people of the Loup-Garroux, or werewolf. Who had sold their souls to the devil in return for the power of transforming themselves into wolves to kill and devour their enemies. All Europe trembled at the very name of these men monsters, but no country was more plagued by them than France.
Hush, hush, Henri. The taciturned minstrel suddenly broke his silence as the singer expanded the theme of his terrible song. Pour l'amour de la bon Dieu. Cease that singing. Suppose a werewolf were in this twenty times damned wood. He glanced fearfully among the shadows. We should all be torn to bits. Bah, the other replied. The Loup-Garou would be lucky if I did not eat him, famished as I am.
Ola, Monsieur Werewolf, he cried mockingly. Come out of the forest. Come out and be eaten by the hungriest song-singer who ever kissed a tavern wench, or drank a gallon of Burgundy at a drought. It was as if his challenge had been waited for. From a low clump in bracken beside the road rose such a marrow-freezing howl as no man had heard before, and a huge, gray, shaggy form larger than any wolf that ever fought a pack of hounds launched itself straight at the astonished Travour's throat. The horses reared in sudden terror, plunging futilely to beat off his assailant.
But the other singer and the servant could give no aid. Encumbered by their cloaks and trappings, their horses plunging and rearing in panic fear, they could but fight desperately to retain their saddles and cry supplications to the Virgin. Help! Help! The attacked man called again. Then, with a shout of desperation, he fell from his saddle, the great gray thing's teeth fastened in his shoulder and near the base of his neck. For a moment he thrashed among the underbrush, unable to draw his longsword. And powerless, the thrust backed the creature with his bare hands. In the struggle, his hand brushed against the hanger in his girdle. He dragged the short cut-and-thrust blade from its scabbard with frantic haste, and struck once, twice, three times at the foul creature's snarling at his throat.
A cry of rage and pain sounded amid the monster's growling, and with a deep, angry bay it rushed off into the forest depths. "'Would the tide heed thy warning, Louis. Never again will I challenge one of those tallest hounds from the devil's kennel. Tomorrow morning, if it please our lady, we see the light of another day. This matter goes before my lord Duke. Holy Church and the secular government must combine to rid the province of these changeling wolves.' The three riders set spurs to their mounts. Nor did they slacken rain till safe within the fortifications of the city of Dole." Next morning, the two singers and their lackey appeared before the provincial officials and made formal complaint that they had been set upon, and one of them all but killed by a loup-garou, or werewolf, in the forest of St.
Bonneau. The officials looked grave when they had heard the complainants through. This was not the first account of werewolf depredations to come before them. Farmers living in the territory contiguous to the city had brought in accounts of sheep stolen from the fold at dead of night. Of dogs killed as they watched the flocks, even of little children found dead and horribly mangled along the roadside and beneath the hedges. Now came these three wayfarers, all of them veterans of the wars, and two of them men of learning and respect, to tell of being boldly attacked on the royal road as they journeyed through the wood. This thing must not be. The power of the country must be raised. And the werewolf or werewolves responsible for the outrages sent forthwith to the fiery hell where their master, the devil, waited.
The coming of their forfeited souls. France of 1573 was in no condition to police her country districts. The long and devastating wars between Huguenots and Catholics had made a sort of no-man's-land of large districts. Charles IX, the king, was a man of wax, molded now by this favorite, now that. And giving no thought to the welfare of his people. Every available sow that taxation could wring from rich or poor was spent to gratify or further the ambitions of the most corrupt and consciousless politician who ever debased a government, the Queen Mother Catherine de' Medici. In these circumstances, the court parliament at Dole might pass as many enactments as it chose, but lacking force with which to make its mandates effective, its acts were but mere scraps of unavailing paper.
One power still remained to the court. This was a levy en masse, a general calling to arms of the countryside. Tradesmen and residents of the towns of those days stood bareheaded when titled Swaggers rode forth, and the agricultural classes were little more important to the nobility than the earth they tilled. For one not holding a patent of nobility to engage in the gentlemanly sport of hunting was to court immediate and merciless punishment. Game must be preserved for the nobles to hunt, though the peasant's stomach went empty and his flocks and herds were depleted by wolves till poverty crushed him to the ground. Now was a chance to declare an open season, give the peasants the thrill of engaging in the noble pastime of the chase, rid the country of the dreaded werewolves, and save the sorely needed public funds all at once.
Accordingly, the following proclamation was issued by the Court of Parliament at Dole. According to the advertisement made to the Sovereign Court of Parliament at Dole, that in the territories of Apagné, Salvagne, Horschapen, and the neighboring villages, has often been seen and met, for some time past a werewolf who, it is said, has already seized and carried off several little children, so that they have not been seen since, and since he has attacked and done injury to divers horsemen in the country, who kept him off only with great difficulty and danger to their persons, And lives. The said court, desiring to prevent any greater danger, has permitted, and by these presents, does hereby permit all those who are now abiding and dwelling in said places and others, notwithstanding all and any edicts concerning the chase, to assemble with pikes, halberts, arquebuses, and other weapons, to chase and to pursue the said werewolf in every place where they may find him, to seize him, To tie him, or if necessary, to kill him without incurring any pains or penalties of any sort, kind or nature whatsoever.
Given at the convocation of the said court on the 13th day of the month of September 1573. Mounted heralds were dispatched throughout the territory adjacent to Dole, and within a few days the court's proclamation was known to every dweller in the vicinity. Soot-point processions were seen issuing from all the villages in the neighborhood. Headed by their parish priests, with sacred statues borne before them, the people sallied forth to hunt down the dreaded loup-garu. Solemn high mass had been sung, the weapons of the huntsmen had been formally laid in the chancels of their churches, and blessed by the curés. And now the hunt commenced. Separating into parties of two, the peasants ranged to fields and woods, seeking everywhere for their accursed prey.
It must be admitted that many of them had no stomach for their task, and would have dropped their weapons and fled incontinently at the first sight of anything resembling a werewolf in the most remote way. Others so far forgot the sacred and official duty with which they were charged as to devote themselves to the hunting of edible game, and many a luckless bunny found its way into the pouches, and later to the kettles of the werewolf hunters. Still others routed forest wolves from their lairs and killed them. So not a few wolf scalps were brought before the provincial authorities. But these were all natural wolves, as incapable of assuming human shape as the peasants were of becoming wolves.
And though their deaths doubtless added greatly to the safety of the neighborhood sheepfolds, they brought the werewolf menace no nearer a termination than when the Court of Parliament first issued its proclamation. Interest in the hunt began to slacken. The peasants had their farmlets to attend. And the great landed proprietors were heartily sick of having their game preservers raided by those supposedly bent on public service. Except among those who had lost children or sheep, the Loup Garou became little more than a hazy recollection. And then suddenly, unexpectedly, he was found. On the 8th of November, 1573, when the fields were all but bare of vegetation, and the last leaves were reluctantly parting company with the trees, Three laborers, hurrying from their work to their homes at Chastanoi by a woodland shortcut, heard the screams of a little girl issuing from a dense tangle of vines and undergrowth, and with the child's screams mingled the baying of a wolf.
Swinging their stout billhooks, cutting a path for themselves through the tangled wildwood, the laborers hastened toward the sounds. In a little clearing they beheld a terrifying sight. Backed against a tree defending herself with a shepherd's crook was a ten-year-old girl bleeding from a half-dozen wounds, while before her was a monstrous creature which never ceased its infernal baying and howling as it attacked her tooth and nail. As the peasants ran forward to the child's rescue, the thing fled off into the forest on all fours, disappearing almost instantly in the darkness. The men would have followed, but the child demanded all their attention, for weakened by loss of blood and exhausted with terror, She fell fainting before they could reach her.
The child was carried home, and the workmen reported their adventure to the authorities. Their astonishment had been too great, and the night too dark for them to make accurate observations. So there was a conflict in their testimony. Two affirmed the thing possessed the body of a wolf. The third swore positively it was a man, and what was more to the point, he recognized him. The clerical authorities cast their vote with the peasants, asserting the child's assailant a wolf, and there the matter rested for a time. On the 14th of the month, the disappearance of a little boy about eight years old was reported. The child had last been seen within an arrow's flight of the gates of Dole, yet he had vanished as completely as though swallowed by the earth.
Now the civil authorities decided on action. They were not inclined to discount the werewolf theory entirely. For to deny the existence of such monsters in those days was treading dangerously close to the skirts of heresy. But neither were they minded to overlook any clue which pointed a natural explanation to the mystery. The Frenchman is curiously logical and direct, even in matters of superstition. Two days after the little boy's disappearance was reported, a Sargent de Ville set out from Dole, armed with a writ of attachment, and a very businesslike sword. And accompanied by six stalwart arquebusiers. Guided by the peasant who claimed to have recognized the little girl's assailant, the party hastened through the forest of Saint-Penot to the home of one Gilles Garnier, which stood beside the banks of a woodland tarn not far from the village of Arnanges.
Gilles Garnier, the man they sought, was a somber, ill-favored fellow, surly and taciturn. He walked with a pronounced stoop and a shuffling gait, looking neither to the right nor left. And little was known of his personal habits, but because of his long, unkempt beard, his filthy and ragged clothing—uncleanliness was next to godliness in those days—and his solitary life, he was popularly known as the Hermit of Saint-Benoil. This title, however, carried with it no implication of sanctity, quite the reverse. Persons with property to lose were wont to lock it up securely when the hermit was known to be in the vicinity, and many a hen roost owed its depreciated population to his evening visits. The hermit's hut was as dilapidated as its tenant.
Its crude roof was made of squares of sod laid across rickety rafters, and its walls of uncemented stones irregularly piled one upon another were encrusted with lichen. The floor was of trodden clay, and the rough timber door hung crazily on hinges of rawhide. The windows were unglazed and stopped against the weather with aprons of untanned skins. The sergeant deployed four of his half-dozen followers in an enveloping movement about the hut. While accompanied by the remaining two, and his guide, he approached the hut and knocked thunderously on its sagging door with the hilt of his sword.
Who calls? Gilles Garnier peered evilly from window. "'I do,' the sergeant answered. "'Open in the name of the law.' "'What seek ye here?' the hermit parlayed. "'I seek thee, accursed of God, werewolf's sleigh of little children,' the officer replied. "'Come forth and yield ye, or, by a lady, I'll come in for thee.'" Gilles Garnier bared his long yellow teeth in an ugly snarl and hunched his rounded shoulders as if to spring upon the messenger of justice, but a second look at the arquebusiers showed him the futility of resistance. The arquebus was grandfather to the flintlock musket of revolutionary days and great-great-grandfather to the modern rifle. It was nearly as tall as a man, had a bore larger than the modern 12-gauge shotgun, and was fired by its bearer, thrusting a glowing fuse or gun match into a touch hole at its breech.
Even with the inferior gunpowder of those days, it had a range twice that of the strongest crossbow, and though it was anything but accurate in aim, it carried a charge of leaden slugs and broken nails which scattered almost over a half-acre lot. If one of the soldiers had opened fire at point-blank range, Gilles Garnier would have been mangled almost beyond human recognition. Gilles Garnier thought it prudent to come out and surrender, his arms and legs firmly manacled, an iron chain about his neck binding him fast to the sergeant's stirrup. The werewolf of Saint-Bonneau was brought to Dole.
For a time, there was a controversy whether state or ecclesiastical courts should take jurisdiction. The clerics maintained that the prisoner had committed his crimes in the form of a wolf, and since he had sold his soul to the devil in order to become a werewolf, it was a matter cognizable only in the courts' spiritual. The civil authorities declared it had not yet proven that the accused had committed any crime, and so if he had committed any, whether as man or beast, it followed he must be tried before the temporal courts. The civil lawyers won, and the trial commenced. Witnesses were summoned to prove the deaths of children and the condition in which their bodies were found. Shepherds appeared to tell of their missing sheep.
The two minstrels and their servant told of the attack made on them the previous September. The little maid rescued by the peasants identified the prisoner positively as her assailant, and showed the court the scars left by his teeth and nails. Then came the examination of the prisoner. In anticipation of his claims to innocence, a choice collection of racks, thumbscrews, leg-crushers, and branding irons was made ready, and the official torturers looked forward to a busy morning. But the prisoner not only confessed all the crimes charged against him, but volunteered information concerning a number of others unknown to the court. On the last day of Michael Mus, September 29th, near the wood of La Serre, while in the form of Wolf, He had attacked and slain with his teeth and claws a little girl of ten or twelve years, drawn her into a thicket, and gnawed the flesh from her arms and legs.
On the fourteenth day, after all, saints, November 14th, also in the form of a wolf, he had seized a little boy, strangled him, and partially eaten him. Asked how he could have strangled the child if he were in wolf's form at the time, he was at first vague in his replies, but finally recollected that his hands had not been changed. So he still had the use of his fingers. On the Friday before St. Bartholomew's Day, he had seized a boy of twelve or thirteen near the village of Perouse and killed him, but was prevented from eating him by the approach of some peasants. These men were found and corroborated the prisoner's statement. Although the little girl whose rescue was the cause of his arrest declared the prisoner had been in human form when he attacked her, Gilles Garnier stoutly maintained he had been in wolf shape at the time.
And to prove his power to change into a wolf at will, he suddenly sank to his all-fours on the courtroom floor, began capering about in grotesque imitation of a wolf, and emitted a series of howls, yelps, and growls which perfectly simulated those of a ferocious beast of prey. The court deliberated over his case decided he had imitated wolf calls only to terrify his victims, but had never actually assumed wolf's form, and consequently voted him guilty of simple murder. Unaccompanied by sorcery. As a murderer, he was punishable only by the civil authorities. Sentence followed hard upon the verdict. On the tenth day following his arrest, Gilles Garnier, the self-confessed werewolf of St. Beno, was dragged by ropes attached to his ankles over a rough road for a distance of nearly a mile, bound to a stake, and burned to death.
Note. The reader must be aware that Gilles Garnier was the victim of that form of insanity known as Zumania, where the patient believes himself an animal. Zumania, or that branch of it known as Lupomania, where the lunatic imagines himself a wolf, is fortunately relatively uncommon today, yet frequent enough to be recognized by medico-legal authorities. If it be remembered that Gilles Garnier was obviously a man of feeble intellect, and that all France, indeed all Europe of that day, reeked with terror tales concerning the loup-garou, which tales Garnier had heard, and implicitly believed since earliest infancy, it can readily be seen how, when his poor wits finally broke down, he came to imagine himself a werewolf.
The fact that he was lucid enough on every subject save this one delusion stamps his ailment. As paranoia or monomania, one of the commonest forms of insanity among the young and middle-aged. The man must have been quite powerless to restrain himself when seized with one of his attacks. And in any modern court, he would have been committed to an institution without even being brought to trial. It does not appear that he ate the flesh of his victims because of hunger. On the contrary, this shocking act must be regarded purely as a symptom of his derangement. When under the spell of his disease, the lunatic frequently resorts to the most unlikely diet. The author was once present at an autopsy performed on a paranoiac's body when no less than half a dozen ten-penny nails were extracted from the unfortunate man's stomach, several of them almost entirely eroded by the natural hydrochloric acid of that organ.
Seabury Quinn.
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7 07 - No. 7: The Human Hyena 20:21
Number 7. The Human Hyena. Mille d'Honère, again! The Prefect of Police beat the polished top of his bureau with a furious fist and bent a stare of angry incredulity on the Sergeant de Sartre, who stood at attention before him. "'It has happened again, though you say. Nom de nom. Is a policeman never to sleep again in this accursed city?' "'Even so, Monsieur le Prefait,' replied the sergeant imperturbably. "'Another of the poor ones has been dragged from her blessed wrist.' "'And dismembered, ha?' The prefect fairly thundered. "'Yes, Monsieur. Dismembered, even us the others.' "'Nom de nom. Petit bonhomme,' exclaimed the prefect. Then feeling that the name of a good little man was scarcely a strong enough oath for the occasion, he added, He drummed a moment on the polished surface of his desk with nervous fingers, regarding his companion thoughtfully.
He said at last, a way must be found to lay the sly one by the hills, no? Perfectly, Monsieur, agreed the sergeant. Has a garb been placed in all the cemeteries? Not all, Monsieur. The city is so unsettled that gendarmes are solely needed for patrol duty. Yes, yes, I understand, the prefect interrupted. We must decide upon some other way. Leave me. I will think this over. Something must be done at once. Pardieu. It is getting so no man can sleep peacefully, even in his grave. The sergeant saluted, placed his right foot exactly six inches behind his left. The prefect of the Paris police lighted a long, thin cigar, and stared fixedly at his office wall, blowing clouds of rancid tobacco smoke from his nose.
The prefect's hands were very full. It was the autumn of 1848, and France was in such turmoil as she had not known since the days of the Directory. That summer the people had risen. Louis-Philippe. The last of the Bourbons had fled to England under the assumed name of Mr. Smith, and a second republic had been declared, with Lamartine, the poet-historian, as its provisional head. But reactionary plots were thicker in Paris than maggots and cheese, and the gendarmeries were kept busy guarding the life of the infant republic. Taking advantage of the policemen's political preoccupation, criminals of all sorts and degrees were plying their nefarious trades. Often in broad daylight, and no man's life or property were safe.
Now added to this ordinary run-of-the-mill crime, a new scandal had broken out in the city and environs of Paris. Several cemeteries within or near the city limits had been broken into during darkness, and many graves had been rifled. At first, the depredations had been ascribed to medical students seeking cadavers for anatomical study. But brief investigations by the police proved this theory unsound. Had body snatchers been responsible, the bodies would have been carried away. As it was, the corpses were found lying about the opened graves and broken tombs in fragments. A wild beast! A heat escaped from a circus, people said. But here again the clue proved groundless, with characteristic thoroughness, such as ever distinguishes French police methods.
The officers had visited every circus and zoological collection within twenty miles of Paris, inquiring if any of them had suffered a loss from their cages. Once a clue seemed within grasp, for a circus owner admitted having lost an animal, but the missing beast was a panther. Had Monsieur le propriétaire ever possessed one of those interesting beasts, Ahéna? Alas, Monsieur, the proprietor was desolated to inform the gentlemen of the police. It had never been his good fortune to include such interesting exhibits of Asia's fauna among his collection. Lions? Certainly. Tigers? But of course. Leopards? Most assuredly panthers, jaguars, pumas. Mais oui. But a hyena? Oh, no. Mais non. Monsieur the proprietor was grieved and shamed to admit it, but no such splendid animal as a hyena had he ever possessed.
The gendarmes shrugged their shoulders and proceeded with their quest. One morning came an urgent message from the Intendant of Père Lachaise Cemetery. A most flagrant outrage had been committed the night before. The body of a young matron, buried in a five-year concession, had been taken from its coffin and literally hacked to pieces with the gravedigger's spade. The gendarmes went to the cemetery and endured to shocking sights, though their profession had made them. Their weather-beaten faces went gray as the spectacle of that poor, violated woman's body. Blows of brutal strength had sheared limbs from torso. The face was mashed to an unrecognizable mass, with the spade's long handle. The top of the head had been beaten to a bloody softness with a board wrenched from the coffin's headboard.
And beside the grave, in the mud of last night's rain, were footprints, long, slender footprints, the sort of tracks a well-shod gentleman's boots might leave. A clue! At last, a clue! the detectives exclaimed. But like all previous ones, this clue led nowhere. The soft, moist earth held the prints up to the cemetery's very gate. But the paving flints of the street outside had no testimony to offer. Even if the miscreant had left tracks of his muddy boots on the stones, The very rain that had made the footprints visible in the cemetery would have washed away all traces long before the officers arrived. Hard-pressed though they were by other duties, the police assigned guards to Père Lachaise, and the depredation ceased at Père Lachaise.
But another cemetery, less than a mile away, was entered, and the body of a little girl, a child but two years past her first communion, was dragged from a three-year concession and shamefully maltreated. Journalism then as now was avidly on the trail of scandal, and the Paris press began resting from its political tirades to abuse the police. Republican and royalist papers were in harmony on this theme. One and all, they called for the immediate apprehension of the monster who disturbed the repose of the blessed dead, or the resignation of an impotent prefect of police. Yet all efforts were unavailing. When all cemeteries were under double guard, the human hyena never put in an appearance. Let the guard be relieved for but a single night, and some poor woman's body lay unearthed and horribly mangled under next morning's sun.
All these things the prefect of police thought of as he smoked his acrid cigar in his cabinet, and drummed up on the polished surface of his desk. "'Meuble,' he muttered, "'we must seize this monster.'" This assassin of the sleep of the dead. We must, we must, we must! But how? The fellow's knowledge of preparations for his apprehension was uncanny. Almost, it seemed, some unfaithful member of the police establishment was giving him information. How else explain his absence from guarded cemeteries, his inevitable raids upon those not protected with gun and bayonet? Aha! Have it! The prefect sat suddenly forward in his chair and rang for his orderly. "'Sin for the Armorer,' he ordered when his call was answered.
"'This assassin shall apprehend himself. We will set a trap for him. The plan is formed. Now let us work. Nom de nom, why did I never think of this before?' Rapidly, the Prefect sketched his plan for the criminal's apprehension. The gunsmith he had summoned nodding understandably at intervals. "'Can you do it?' the Prefect asked at length. "'Yes, Monsieur,' the Armorer answered. I'm quite certain it can be arranged. Hurried preparations took place in the material department of police headquarters all next day. Before twilight faded into night, the walls of every cemetery throughout Paris bristled with spring guns so cleverly arranged that anyone attempting to enter the graveyards, except through their gates, must necessarily come in contact with concealed wires which, touched never so lightly, would discharge the cocked and doubly loaded muskets.
With these automatic sentries on duty before the city's graves, the prefect was able to reduce his human guards to one or two men for each burying ground, leaving some score more gendarmes free for patrolling the troubled city's streets. Autumn ripened into winter, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, nephew of Napoleon the Great, was chosen president of the new republic by an overwhelming vote, and was triumphantly inaugurated on the 20th of December. With a relative of the little corporal at its head, The young republic felt assured of continued existence, and the Paris police were able to turn their attention from sedition hunting to thief catching. The palmy days of crime were ended, and the press ceased its abuse of the police, but the human hyena was still at large.
Almost with the establishment of the spring guns in the cemeteries, his nocturnal raids ceased, and the prefect was about to relieve the graveyard guards and dismount the guns when... On a rainy, dismal night, in March 1849, the gendarmes stationed at St. Parnasse Cemetery huddled for shelter beneath the pentas of the chapel. The rain, when driven between the leafless branches of the poplar trees, beat dismally down upon the age-stained marble tombs and the rough, unsodden mounds of the ten-year concessions. Off by the further wall of the cemetery, Beneath their ghastly white wooden signboards, the five- and three-year concessions seemed to cower from the storm. These were the graves of the poorer dead, for in France there were four classes of burials beside those of the potter's field.
First were those rich enough to own their tombs or grave-lots in perpetuity. They slept the long, long sleep of death undisturbed. Next came the ten-year concessionaires whose relatives had bought them the right to lie in moderately deep graves for a decade, after which they would be exhumed and deposited in a common charnel house, all trace of their identity lost. The five-year concession's graves were scarcely deeper than the height of the coffins they enclosed, and their repose was limited to half a decade, while the three-year concession's placed nearest the cemetery walls Where merely mounds of earth heaped over coffins resting on the surface of the ground, destined to be broken down and emptied thirty-six months after their tenants' burial.
Pardieu, one of the gendarmes swore, sinking lower under his waterproof cape. What a night, and what a place! Better a thousand times the battlefield than such a patrol. The shout of conflict, the crash of musketry. Bang! The report of a discharged rifle cut through his words. And a streak of yellow-red fire tore the rain-drenched darkness above the wall beyond the three-year concessions. "'Nom de Kouk!' exclaimed the startled gendarme, leaping to his feet and grasping his sable hilt. "'It is he! The canal has come!' Together the officers raced across the boggy graves, their drawn swords glistening dully in the rain. Impeded in their progress by the mud and darkness, they were in time to see a dark figure in a military mantle leap the wall.
And disappeared in the gloom. Marks of blood, however, gave evidence. The spring gun's bullet had struck its mark, and a scrap of blue cloth clinging to one of the iron spikes with which the wall was topped afforded an added clue to the ravisher of the graves. Unsoldat, the elder of the gendarmes pronounced, alas that is a follower of that noble profession should sink to such a crime. Next morning the search was on in earnest. From barracks to barracks, the gendarmes went inquiring if any of the military personnel had reported himself suffering from gunshot wounds. Almost immediately they found their man in the person of Lieutenant Bertrand, a junior officer of an infantry regiment stationed in the capital.
Not only did this young man show such a wound as would match the spring gun's ball, but his cloak was ripped by some sharp instrument, and the fragment of cloth in the gendarmes' possession matched the rent. Their circumstantial case was complete.
The wounded man was confined under guard at Val de Grasse Hospital till his wound was healed, then placed on trial. In England or America, his hearing would have been before the civil tribunal, for during time of peace in these countries, the civil power is separate from and superior to the military. But France, though a republic, was still imbued with continental European ideas of jurisprudence. Maintaining one general law for the citizenry and another or administrative system for the military and official classes. Consequently, it was not a civil criminal court, but a court-martial which heard Bertrand's case. The judge advocate was relieved of the necessity of proving his case, for the young lieutenant made a free confession, revealing one of the most amazing stories ever detailed before a judicial inquiry.
He was 23 years of age. Excellently educated, having been a student at the Theological Cemetery at Long, from early youth until, at the age of twenty, he had entered the army with a junior lieutenant's commission. He was a young man of retiring habits, frank and cheerful to his comrades-in-arms, and beloved by every member of his regiment, from the colonel to the newest conscript private. Numbers of his brother officers testified to his almost feminine delicacy of refinement. According to his own statement made under oath in February 1847, as he was walking with a friend in the country, he came to a churchyard, the gate of which stood open. The day before, a woman had been buried, but the sexton had not completed his melancholy task of filling the grave.
Having been interrupted by a sudden storm of rain, Bertrand had noticed the spade and pick lying beside the partially filled grave, and getting rid of his friend by a ruse, he caught up the spade and began hurriedly to unearth the coffin, to quote his statement. Soon I dragged the corpse out of the grave, and began to hash it with the spade without well knowing what I was about. A laborer saw me, and I laid myself flat to the ground, ventre a terre, till he was out of sight. Then I cast the body back into the grave. I then went away, bathed in a cold sweat, into a little grove, where I reposed for several hours, notwithstanding the cold rain which fell. I was in a state of complete exhaustion.
When I arose, my limbs were as broken as my head was weak. The same prostration and sensation followed each attack. The prisoner had suffered no further attack during the subsequent four or five months. And had begun to regard his rural experience as a fit of temporary madness. Indeed, he had sometimes wondered whether it had not been simply a sort of waking nightmare, and had actually never occurred at all. In the summer of 1848, his regiment was ordered for duty to Paris, and among the sites he visited was the cemetery of Père-Lachaise. While walking through the shadowy alleys of this great metropolis, the irresistible craving to mutilate a corpse swept over him like a flood. That night he scaled the cemetery's wall, disinterred a body, and cut it to pieces.
This was the beginning of the mysterious cases of ghoulism, which had so baffled and puzzled the police of the French capital. At first, Bertrand stated, the morbid fits followed an overindulgence in wine. His life at the seminary had been most abstemious. But later they came upon him without exciting cause. Though police records failed to disclose so great a number. Lieutenant Bertrand stated he had unearthed twenty-five bodies, several of them being men. These last he had gloated over, but never dismembered, this fiendishness being exercised only upon female corpses. Army physicians and several eminent civilian practitioners subjected the young man to such tests as science of that day afforded, and pronounced him sane.
The finding of the court was, therefore, that he be shorn of his buttons an insignia of rank. The sentence was carried out.
The case of this unfortunate young man presents many interesting questions for the medical jurist. Taking his early life and training into account, and remembering how he must have lived almost entirely in unworldly surroundings apart from wholesome feminine society, It is not very difficult to imagine the basis of his original perversion. To use a good, though much overworked and loosely employed term, he was the victim of a complex, that is, a series of emotionally accentuated ideas in a repressed state. Like Gilles de Laval, the Sire de Retz, whose case has already been discussed.
This magazine was the first to have the courage to make public the shocking revelations of the original Bluebeard's trial. End footnote. The celebrated Jack the Ripper, whose crimes mystified the London police a generation ago, and the infamous Marquis de Sade, Lieutenant Bertrand unquestionably suffered from that form of mental derangement known to modern psychiatrists as algalognia, coupled, perhaps, with what is called coprophilia, or a pathological liking for filth. This last being shown by his desire to associate with interred corpses. His periods of great excitement while indulging his disgusting mania for the mutilation of dead bodies, and the following periods of profound lassitude all point plainly to this, in the light of modern psychiatry, though these same symptoms were the cause of some odd speculations by several observers of the case.
The late Dr. Sabin Baring Gould. A profound student of folklore and anthropology, naively suggested Bertrand to be the victim of demoniacal possession, while Elliot O'Donnell believes or affects to believe him a werewolf. To substantiate this surprising theory, he tells of a young French woman, one Constance Armand, who was suddenly seized with an uncontrollable desire to enter a house of mourning, sees the body lying in its open coffin, and eat portions of it. Two cases of lunacy cited to prove one absurd superstition. Whatever the facts of Bertrand's case, it is not to be denied he suffered a great injustice through the sentence of the court-martial, since the crimes he committed were obviously of a pathological origin, and by his own statement committed under the urge of an irresistible impulse.
His moral sense told him he was doing a wrong, but able though he was to distinguish the criminal nature of his acts, he was unable to resist. Footnote. In these circumstances, a perfect defense of insanity might have been legally raised. See Clark or any standard work on criminal law. Seabury Quinn. End footnote.
Seabury Quinn, author of this series of Weird Crimes, has prepared for you a startling series of Noted Witchcraft Cases. Watch for them in Weird Tales!
End of Section 7. End of Weird Crimes by Seabury Quinn.