CHAPTER VII

The inn of the _Tête-Noire_--Auguste Ballet--Castaing--His trial--His attitude towards the audience and his words to the jury--His execution

The second drama which happened in Paris, and which was to have its denouement on the place de Grève, on the same day that the _École des Vieillards_ was played, was the poisoning of Auguste Ballet.

We have spoken of the death of poor little Fleuriet, who was as pretty, fresh and flower-like as her name, and who was carried off in twenty-four hours without any apparent reason for her death. May I be forgiven the accusation implied in this statement, for it may be a calumny; but when the facts cited below are considered, the cause of her death may be guessed.

On 29 May, two young people arrived in what at that period was called "une petite voiture," and drew up at the _Tête-Noire_ inn, at Saint-Cloud. They had set off without leaving word where they were going. Towards nine o'clock in the evening they were installed in a double-bedded chamber. One of the couple paid a deposit of five francs. The two friends walked about together the whole of the next day, Friday, the 30th; they only appeared at the hotel at dinner-time, and went out again immediately after their repast for another walk. It was nine o'clock at night before they returned for the second time. When going upstairs, one of them asked for a half-bottle of mulled wine, adding that it need not be sugared, as they had brought sugar with them. The wine was taken up a few minutes after nine, sugared with the sugar that they had brought, and made tasty with lemons bought in Saint-Cloud. The same young man who made the five francs deposit for the room, who ordered the dinner, and forbade the sugar to be brought upstairs, mixed the sugar and lemon juice in the bowl of warmed wine.

One of the two seemed to be a doctor; for, having heard that one of the servants of the house was ill, he went upstairs to see him, before tasting the prepared wine, and felt his pulse. However, he did not prescribe anything for him, and returned to his friend's room after an absence of a quarter of an hour. The said friend had found the wine very nasty, and had only drunk about a tablespoonful of it. He had stopped short because of the bitter flavour of the beverage. In the midst of all this, the chambermaid entered. "I must have put too much lemon in this wine," said the young man, holding the bowl towards her: "it is so bitter I cannot drink it." The servant tasted it; but she spat it out as soon as she had had a mouthful of it, exclaiming, "Oh yes!... rather, you have made it bitter!" Upon which she left the room. The two friends went to bed.

Throughout the night the young man who had tasted the wine was seized with violent spasms of nervous shivering, which did not give him a moment's rest; he complained to his companion several times that he could not keep himself still. Towards two o'clock, he had fits of colic and, at daybreak, about half-past three in the morning, he said he did not think he would be able to get up, that his feet were on fire and that he could not possibly put on his boots. The other young man said he would take a turn in the park, and recommended his friend to try and sleep in the meantime. But, instead of going for a walk in the park, the young man whose visit to the sick servant led people to suppose him a doctor, took a carriage, returned to Paris, bought twelve grains of acetate of morphine from M. Robin, rue de la Feuillade, and one drachm from M. Chevalier, another chemist, obtaining them readily in the capacity of a medical man. He returned to the inn of the _Tête-Noire_ at eight o'clock, after four hours' absence, and asked for some cold milk for his friend. The sick man felt no better; he drank the cup of milk prepared by the young doctor, and almost immediately he was taken with fits of vomiting which rapidly succeeded each other. Soon he was seized by colic. Strange to say, in spite of the attack becoming worse, the doctor again left the patient alone, without leaving any instructions and without appearing to be uneasy at a condition of things which was arousing the anxiety of strangers. While he was absent, the hostess of the hotel and the chambermaid went up to the sick man and did what they could for him. He was in great agony. The young doctor returned in about half an hour's time. He found the patient in an alarming condition; he was asking for a doctor, insisting that one should be fetched from Saint-Cloud, and he opposed his friend's suggestion that one should be fetched from Paris. He felt so ill, he said, that he could not wait.

So they ran for the nearest available; but nevertheless it was not until eleven o'clock in the morning that the doctor whom they went to seek arrived. His name was M. Pigache.

The sick man was a little easier by that time. M. Pigache asked to see the evacuations, but he was told that they had been thrown away. He ordered emollients, but the emollients were not applied. He came back an hour later and prescribed a soothing draught. The young doctor administered it himself to the invalid; but the effect it produced was prompt and terrible: five minutes after, the patient was seized by frightful convulsions. In the midst of these convulsions he lost consciousness, and from that moment never regained it.

Towards eleven o'clock at night, the young doctor, weeping bitterly, informed a servant that his friend could not survive the night. The servant ran for M. Pigache, who decided, in spite of the short time he had attended him, to pay the dying man one more visit. He found the unhappy youth lying on his back, his neck rigidly strained, his head uncovered, hardly able to breathe; he could neither hear nor feel; his pulse was slow, his skin burning; his limbs were stiff and rigid, his mouth clenched; his whole body was running with a cold sweat and marked with bluish spots. M. Pigache decided he must at once bleed the patient freely, and he bled him twice--with leeches and with the lancet. It made the sick man a little easier. M. Pigache pointed this out to his young confrère, saying that the condition of the dying man was desperate and that, as the good effect produced by the two bleedings was so noticeable, he did not hesitate to propose a third. But this the young doctor opposed, saying that the responsibility was too great, and that, if the third bleeding ended badly, the whole of the responsibility for the ending would rest on M. Pigache. Upon this, the latter peremptorily demanded that a doctor should be sent for from Paris.

This course would have been quite easy, for, during that very day, as the result of a letter despatched by the young doctor couched in the following terms, "M. Ballet being ill at Saint-Cloud, Jean must come to him at once, in the gig, with the grey horse; neither he nor mother Buvet must speak a word of this to a single soul; if anybody makes inquiry, they must say he is going into the country by order of M. Ballet," Jean, who was a negro servant, arrived with the grey horse and the gig. In spite of this facility of communication, the young doctor made out that it was too late to send for a doctor from Paris. They waited, therefore, until three o'clock, and at three o'clock Jean started off with two letters from M. Pigache to two of his medical friends.

M. Pigache left the house, and as the young doctor accompanied him, he said, "Monsieur, I think no time should be lost in sending for the priest of Saint-Cloud; your friend is a Catholic and I think so badly of his condition that you ought to have the last sacraments administered to him without delay."

The young man recognised the urgency of the advice, and, going himself to the house of the curé, he brought him back with the sacristan.

The priest found the dying man in the same unconscious condition. "What is the matter with your unfortunate friend, monsieur?" asked the priest.

"Brain fever," replied the young man.

Then, as the curé was preparing to administer extreme unction, the young doctor knelt down, and remained in that position, with clasped hands, praying to God with such fervour that the sacristan could not refrain from remarking when they had both left, "What a very pious young man that was!" The young doctor went out after the priest, and remained away for nearly two hours.

Towards three o'clock, one of the two doctors that had been sent for arrived from Paris. It was Doctor Pelletan junior. M. Pigache, informed of his arrival, came and joined his confrère at the bedside of the sick man. But, after a rapid examination, both concluded that the patient was beyond human aid.

Nevertheless, they tried various remedies, but without success. All this time the young doctor appeared to be overcome with the most poignant grief--a grief that expressed itself in tears and sobs. These demonstrations of despair impressed M. Pigache all the more because, in course of conversation, the young doctor had said to him, "I am all the more unhappy as I am my unfortunate friend's legatee."

Thereupon M. Pelletan, addressing the weeping young man, said to him, "Have you reflected, monsieur, on the peril of your position?"

"What do you mean, monsieur?"

"Well, listen! You come, with your friend, for a couple of days to Saint-Cloud; you are a doctor; you are, anyway, his legatee...."

"Yes, monsieur, I am his residuary legatee."

"Very well: the man who has bequeathed you his entire fortune is dying; the symptoms of his illness are extremely peculiar and, if he dies, as is probable, you will find yourself in a very awkward position...."

"What!" exclaimed the young man. "You think I shall be suspected?"

"I think that, at any rate," replied M. Pelletan, "all imaginable precautions will be taken to ascertain the cause of death. As far as M. Pigache and myself are concerned, we have decided that there ought to be a post-mortem examination."

"Oh! monsieur," cried the young man, "you could not do me a greater service; insist upon it, demand a post-mortem examination, and you will play the part of a father to me if you do."

"Very well, monsieur," replied Doctor Pelletan, seeing him so much excited; "do not be troubled. Not only shall the matter be carried through, but it shall be carried through as delicately as possible, and we will pay our utmost attention to it."

Between noon and one o'clock--that is to say, within thirty or forty minutes of this conversation--the dying man expired.

The reader will already have recognised the two principal actors in this drama by the designation of the place where it happened, and by the details of the victim's agony.

The dead man was Claude-Auguste Ballet, lawyer, aged twenty-five, son of a rich Paris solicitor. His friend was Edme-Samuel Castaing, who in a few days' time would be twenty-seven, doctor of medicine, born at Alençon, living in Paris, No. 31 rue d'Enfer. His father, an honourable and universally respected man, was Inspector-General of Forests, and Chevalier of the _Légion d'honneur._

One hour after the death of Auguste Ballet, M. Martignon, his brother-in-law, warned by a letter from Castaing that Auguste Ballet could not live through the day, hurried to Saint-Cloud, where he found the sick man already dead.

While they were proceeding to search every object in the inn that might possibly throw some light on the cause of death, Castaing, still at large, absented himself for nearly two hours. No one knew what he did in his second absence. He pretended he wanted fresh air, and stated that he was going for a walk in the bois de Boulogne.

M. Pelletan returned at ten o'clock next morning to make the post-mortem examination.

He had left Castaing in full possession of his liberty, but when he returned he found him under the surveillance of two policemen. Castaing appeared very uneasy at the results to which a post-mortem examination might lead; but he seemed to feel sure that if the body did not present any trace of poison, he would be set at liberty immediately.

The examination took place and an extremely circumstantial official report was drawn up; but nowhere, either in tongue, or in stomach or in intestines, could they detect the presence of any poisonous substance. As a matter of fact, acetate of morphine, like brucine and strychnine, leaves no more trace than is left by congestion of the brain or a bad seizure of apoplexy. It was because of this, a fact which Castaing knew well, that when the priest had asked him from what his friend was suffering, he had replied, "He has brain fever."

When the post-mortem was finished, without having revealed any material proof against the suspected person, M. Pelletan asked the _procureur du roi_ if he had any objection to Castaing being informed of the result.

"No," replied _the procureur du roi_; "simply communicate the result to him in general terms, without making him think it is going to be either in his favour or to his detriment."

M. Pelletan found Castaing waiting for him upon the staircase.

"Well," he asked the doctor eagerly, "have you concluded and come to release me?"

"I am unaware," replied M. Pelletan, "whether they mean to release you or to detain you; but the truth is we can find no trace of violent death in the body of Auguste Ballet."

In spite of the temporary absence of material proof, Castaing was kept a prisoner. The preliminary investigation began: it lasted from the month of June to the end of September.

On 10 November, Castaing appeared at the prisoner's bar. The affair had created a great sensation even before it was made public; and the Assize Court presented the appearance usual when an important case is on--that is to say, so many lovely women and fashionably dressed men put in an appearance that one might have thought it the first night of a new play which had been announced with great pomp. The accused was brought in. An indefinable movement of interest agitated the spectators: they bent forward and oscillated with curiosity, looking like a field of corn tossed about by the wind. He was a handsome young man, well set up, with a pleasant face, although there was something rather odd in his expression as he looked at you. Without being elegantly attired, he was dressed with care.

Alas! the preliminary investigation had revealed terrible facts. Auguste Ballet's death had caused judicial attention to be bestowed upon this unlucky family, and it was discovered that, since Castaing had known the family, the father, the mother, the uncle had all disappeared, struck down mortally within five months of each other, leaving the two brothers Hippolyte and Auguste a very considerable fortune; and, finally, Hippolyte died in his turn in Castaing's arms, without either his brother Auguste or his sister Madame Martignon being able to get to him. All these deaths had successively concentrated pretty nearly the whole of the family fortune on the head of Auguste Ballet.

On 1 December 1822, Auguste Ballet, aged twenty-four, in health of mind and body at the time, made a will, constituting Castaing, without any motive, his residuary legatee, with no reservations beyond a few small bequests to two friends and three servants. Auguste Ballet died in his turn on 1 June, seven months after his brother. Now this is what the proceedings had elicited concerning the two points which in similar cases are specially investigated by those in charge of the case--namely, Castaing's intellectual and his physical life. With regard to his intellectual life, Castaing was a hard worker, urged on by ambition, burning with the desire to become rich; his mother revealed horrible things concerning him, if a letter that was seized at her house was to be believed; his father reproached him with his licentious life and the sorrow with which he overwhelmed both his parents. In the midst of all this, he worked on perseveringly: he passed his examinations; he became a doctor.

Anatomy, botany and chemistry were the subjects to which he devoted most time. Especially chemistry. His note-books were produced, full of observations, extracts, erasures. They attested the determination shown in his researches and the profound study he had made of poisons, of their various kinds, of their effects, of the palpable traces some leave on different bodily organs, whilst some, quite as deadly and more insidious, kill without leaving any vestiges perceptible to the eyes of the most learned and experienced anatomist.

These poisons are all vegetable poisons: brucine, derived from false angostura; strychnine from Saint-Ignatius nut; morphine from pure opium, which is extracted from the Indian poppy. Now, it was a strange and terrible coincidence that on 18 September 1822, seventeen days before the death of Hippolyte Ballet, Castaing bought ten grains of acetate of morphine. Twelve days later, Hippolyte, suffering from a serious pulmonary disease, but not yet in danger, was seized with a deadly attack and died, as we have said, far from his sister and his brother, after five days' illness! He died in Castaing's arms.

Then Castaing's fortunes changed: he who had been very hard up heretofore lent his mother thirty thousand francs and invested under assumed names or in bearer stock the sum of seventy thousand francs. The matter was further complicated by matters arising out of the will of Hippolyte Ballet, questions which will never be properly cleared up, even in the law courts, and which seemed to imply that Auguste Ballet became Castaing's accomplice. Hence Auguste's weakness for Castaing; hence that will in his favour; hence the intimacy between these two men, who never separated from one another; all these things were explained, from the moment when, instead of the ordinary bond of pure and simple friendship, the link between them was supposed to be the indestructible chain of mutual complicity.

For--and this is the time to return to his outward life, that we have put to one side in order to speak of the intellectual life--Castaing was not wealthy: he lived on a moderate income allowed him by his mother; his own efforts barely produced him five or six hundred francs per annum; he had a mistress, also very poor, a widow with three children; he had two other children by her, so the young doctor had to keep a family of six persons whilst as yet he had no practice. It seems that he adored his family, especially his children. Letters were found showing warm fatherly affection in a heart that was consumed, even more on behalf of others than on his own account, with that thirst of ambition and that craving for riches which brought him to the scaffold.

We have seen that Castaing's finances suddenly became easier, that he lent his mother thirty thousand francs and that he invested seventy thousand francs in assumed names or in bearer bonds.

Then, next, we saw that on 29 May he arrived at Saint-Cloud with Auguste Ballet, and that, on 1 June, Auguste Ballet died, leaving him residuary legatee. Castaing was in Paris on the evening he was absent under pretence of taking a walk: he bought twelve grains from one chemist and one drachm from a second, of acetate of morphine, or, in other words, of that vegetable poison which leaves no traces and of which he had already bought ten grains, seventeen days before the death of Hippolyte Ballet.

The above is a résumé of the accumulated evidence brought against Castaing, who had to face the jury under the weight of fifteen charges relative to the poisoning of Hippolyte Ballet, of thirty-four connected with the business of the will and of seventy-six relative to the poisoning of Auguste Ballet. People will remember the different phases gone through during that long and terrible trial; the steady denials of the prisoner, and his bearing on receipt of the sentence condemning him to death; a sentence decided by the turn of only one vote--that is to say, by seven against five.

The criminal stood, with bared head, and listened with frigid resignation to the sentence, his hands clasped together, silent, his eyes and hands raised to Heaven.

"Have you anything to say why sentence should not be carried out?" asked the judge.

Castaing sadly shook his head, the head so soon to feel the chilly grip of death.

"No, monsieur," he said in a deep but gentle voice,--"no, I have nothing to say against the carrying out of the sentence decreed against me. I shall know how to die, although it is a great misfortune to die, hurried to the grave by such a dire fate as has overtaken me. I am accused of having basely murdered my two friends, and I am innocent.... Oh! indeed, I repeat it, I am innocent! But there is a Providence: that which is immortal in me will go forth to find you, Auguste, Hippolyte. Oh yes, my friends" (and here the condemned man stretched out both his arms to heaven most impressively),--"oh yes, my friends, yes, I shall meet you again, and to me it will be a happy fate to rejoin you. After the accusation brought against me, nothing human can affect me. Now I look no longer for human pity, I look only for Heaven's mercy; I shall mount the scaffold courageously, cheered by the thought of seeing you again! Oh! my friends, this thought will rejoice my soul even when I feel.... Alas!" continued the accused, passing his hand across his neck, "alas! it is easier to understand what I feel than to express what I dare not utter...." Then, in a lower tone, "You have decided on my death, messieurs; behold, I am ready to die." Then, turning to his counsel, Maître Roussel, he said, "Look, look, Roussel, turn round, come here and look at me.... You believed in my innocence, and you defended me believing in that innocence; well, it is even so, I am innocent; take my farewell greetings to my father, my brothers, my mother, my daughter!" Then, without any pause, he went on, addressing the amazed spectators: "And you, young people, you who have been present at my trial; you, my contemporaries, will be present also at my execution; you will see me there animated with the same courage as now, and if the shedding of my blood be deemed necessary to society, well, I shall not regret that it has to flow!"

Why have I related the details of this terrible trial in such fulness? Is it in order to awake gloomy memories of the past in the hearts of the members of those two unhappy families who may still be alive? No! It was because, by reason of the reports connecting poor Fleuriet with Castaing, I was present at the final tragedy; I begged a day's holiday from M. Oudard in order to see the end; I was present among the number of those young people whom the condemned man, in a moment of exaltation, of delirium, perhaps, invited to his execution; and when I saw that man so exuberantly young, so full of life, so eager after knowledge, condemned to death, bidding farewell to his father, his mother, his brothers, his children, society, creation, light, in those poignant tones and miserable accents, I said to myself in inexpressible anguish of heart, "O my God! my God! suppose this man should be another Lesurques, another Labarre, another Calas!... O my God! my God! suppose this man be not guilty!"

And, then and there, before the tribunal which had just condemned a man to death, I vowed that, no matter to what position I might attain, I would never look upon it as justifiable to punish a sentient, suffering human being like myself by the deprivation of life.

No, I was not present at the execution; for, I must admit, I could not possibly have borne such a spectacle; and now twenty-eight years have flown by between Castaing's execution and Lafourcade's, and they have been full of such cases, in spite of the penalty of death, which is meant to be a deterrent and does not deter! Alas! how many wretched criminals have passed along the route that led from the Conciergerie to the place de Grève, and now leads from la Roquette to the barrière de Saint-Jacques, during those twenty-eight years!

On 6 December, at half-past seven in the morning, Castaing was led from Bicêtre to la Conciergerie. A moment later, the gaoler entered his cell and told him of the rejection of his petition. Behind the gaoler came the abbé Montes.

Castaing then turned his attention to his prayers, praying long and earnestly. He did not utter a single word during the whole of the time he spent in the vestibule of the Conciergerie, while they were preparing him for his execution.

When he looked round at the vast crowd that awaited his appearance as he mounted into the cart, his cheeks grew suddenly purple, and then gradually subsided to a deathly paleness. He only lifted his head at the foot of the scaffold; it had remained sunk on his breast during the journey; then, glancing at the crowd again as he had done on coming out of the Conciergerie, he knelt at the foot of the ladder and, after he had kissed the crucifix and embraced the worthy ecclesiastic who offered it him, he climbed the scaffold, held up by the executioner's two assistants. He raised his eyes twice quite noticeably to Heaven while they pinioned him on the fatal block; then, at fifteen minutes past two, as the quarter chimed, his head fell.

Castaing had experienced the sensation of death that he had not dared more clearly to define to the audience when he drew his hand across his neck--Castaing had passed before his Creator--if guilty, to receive forgiveness, if innocent, to denounce the real criminal.

He had asked to see his father, to receive his benediction _in extremis_; the favour was refused him. He next asked for this benediction to be sent him in writing. It was sent to him thus, but was first passed through vinegar before being handed to him. They feared the paternal benediction might hide some poison by the aid of which Castaing might find means to cheat the scaffold of its due.

All was ended by half-past two, and those who wished to have comedy after tragedy still had time to go from the place de Grève to take their stand in the queue outside the Théâtre-Français. On that day, 6 December 1823, the _École des Vieillards_ was played.