Chapter 6

The accused himself showed points of character that were rare amongst the peasantry. He baffled the cleverest police-spies employed against him, without knowing their real character. To the leading minds of the magistracy his guilt seemed caused by the influence of passion, and not by necessity or greed, as in the case of ordinary murderers, who usually pass through stages of crime and punishment before they commit the supreme deed. Active and careful search was made in following up this idea; but the uniform discretion of the prisoner gave no clue whatever to his prosecutors. The plausible theory of his attachment to a woman of the upper classes having once been admitted, Jean-Francois was subjected to the most insidious examination upon it; but his caution triumphed over all the moral tortures the examining judge applied to him. When, making a final effort, that official told him that the person for whom he had committed the crime was discovered and arrested, his face did not change, and he replied ironically:--

“I should very much like to see him.”

When the public were informed of these circumstances, many persons adopted the suspicions of the magistrates, which seemed to be confirmed by Tascheron’s savage obstinacy in giving no account of himself. Increased interest was felt in a young man who was now a problem. It is easy to see how these elements kept public curiosity on the _qui vive_, and with what eager interest the trial would be followed. But in spite of every effort on the part of the police, the prosecution stopped short on the threshold of hypothesis; it did not venture to go farther into the mystery where all was obscurity and danger. In certain judicial cases half-certainties are not sufficient for the judges to proceed upon. Nevertheless the case was ordered for trial, in hopes that the truth would come to the surface when the case was brought into court, an ordeal under which many criminals contradict themselves.

Monsieur Graslin was one of the jury; so that either through her husband or through Monsieur de Grandville, the public prosecutor, Veronique knew all the details of the criminal trial which, for a fortnight, kept the department, and we may say all France, in a state of excitement. The attitude maintained by the accused seemed to justify the theory of the prosecution. More than once when the court opened, his eyes turned upon the brilliant assemblage of women who came to find emotions in a real drama, as though he sought for some one. Each time that the man’s glance, clear, but impenetrable, swept along those elegant ranks, a movement was perceptible, a sort of shock, as though each woman feared she might appear his accomplice under the inquisitorial eyes of judge and prosecutor.

The hitherto useless efforts of the prosecution were now made public, also the precautions taken by the criminal to ensure the success of his crime. It was shown that Jean-Francois Tascheron had obtained a passport for North America some months before the crime was committed. Thus the plan of leaving France was fully formed; the object of his passion must therefore be a married woman; for he would have no reason to flee the country with a young girl. Possibly the crime had this one object in view, namely, to obtain sufficient means to support this unknown woman in comfort.

The prosecution had found no passport issued to a woman for North America. In case she had obtained one in Paris, the registers of that city were searched, also those of the towns contingent to Limoges, but without result. All the shrewdest minds in the community followed the case with deep attention. While the more virtuous dames of the department attributed the wearing of pumps on a muddy road (an inexplicable circumstance in the ordinary lives of such shoes) to the necessity of noiselessly watching old Pingret, the men pointed out that pumps were very useful in silently passing through a house--up stairways and along corridors--without discovery.

So Jean-Francois Tascheron and his mistress (by this time she was young, beautiful, romantic, for every one made a portrait of her) had evidently intended to escape with only one passport, to which they would forge the additional words, “and wife.” The card tables were deserted at night in the various social salons, and malicious tongues discussed what women were known in March, 1829, to have gone to Paris, and what others could be making, openly or secretly, preparations for a journey. Limoges might be said to be enjoying its Fualdes trial, with an unknown and mysterious Madame Manson for an additional excitement. Never was any provincial town so stirred to its depths as Limoges after each day’s session. Nothing was talked of but the trial, all the incidents of which increased the interest felt for the accused, whose able answers, learnedly taken up, turned and twisted and commented upon, gave rise to ample discussions. When one of the jurors asked Tascheron why he had taken a passport for America, the man replied that he had intended to establish a porcelain manufactory in that country. Thus, without committing himself to any line of defence, he covered his accomplice, leaving it to be supposed that the crime was committed, if at all, to obtain funds for this business venture.

In the midst of such excitement it was impossible for Veronique’s friends to refrain from discussing in her presence the progress of the case and the reticence of the criminal. Her health was extremely feeble; but the doctor having advised her going out into the fresh air, she had on one occasion taken her mother’s arm and walked as far as Madame Sauviat’s house in the country, where she rested. On her return she endeavored to keep about until her husband came to his dinner, which she always served him herself. On this occasion Graslin, being detained in the court-room, did not come in till eight o’clock. She went into the dining-room as usual, and was present at a discussion which took place among a number of her friends who had assembled there.

“If my poor father were still living,” she remarked to them, “we should know more about the matter; possibly this man might never have become a criminal. I think you have all taken a singular idea about the matter. You insist that love is at the bottom of the crime, and I agree with you there; but why do you think this unknown person is a married woman? He may have loved some young girl whose father and mother would not let her marry him.”

“A young girl could, sooner or later, have married him legitimately,” replied Monsieur de Grandville. “Tascheron has no lack of patience; he had time to make sufficient means to support her while awaiting the time when all girls are at liberty to marry against the wishes of their parents; he need not have committed a crime to obtain her.”

“I did not know that a girl could marry in that way,” said Madame Graslin; “but how is it that in a town like this, where all things are known, and where everybody sees everything that happens to his neighbor, not the slightest clue to this woman has been obtained? In order to love, persons must see each other and consequently be seen. What do you really think, you magistrates?” she added, plunging a fixed look into the eyes of the _procureur-general_.

“We think that the woman belongs to the bourgeois or the commercial class.”

“I don’t agree with you,” said Madame Graslin. “A woman of that class does not have elevated sentiments.”

This reply drew all eyes on Veronique, and the whole company waited for an explanation of so paradoxical a speech.

“During the hours I lie awake at night I have not been able to keep my mind from dwelling on this mysterious affair,” she said slowly, “and I think I have fathomed Tascheron’s motive. I believe the person he loves is a young girl, because a married woman has interests, if not feelings, which partly fill her heart and prevent her from yielding so completely to a great passion as to leave her home. There is such a thing as a love proceeding from passion which is half maternal, and to me it is evident that this man was loved by a woman who wished to be his prop, his Providence. She must have put into her passion something of the genius that inspires the work of artists and poets, the creative force which exists in woman under another form; for it is her mission to create men, not things. Our works are our children; our children are the pictures, books, and statues of our lives. Are we not artists in their earliest education? I say that this unknown woman, if she is not a young girl, has never been a mother but is filled with the maternal instinct; she has loved this man to form him, to develop him. It needs a feminine element in you men of law to detect these shades of motive, which too often escape you. If I had been your deputy,” she said, looking straight at the _procureur-general_, “I should have found the guilty woman, if indeed there is any guilt about it. I agree with the Abbe Dutheil that these lovers meant to fly to America with the money of old Pingret. The theft led to the murder by the fatal logic which the punishment of death inspires. And so,” she added with an appealing look at Monsieur de Grandville, “I think it would be merciful in you to abandon the theory of premeditation, for in so doing you would save the man’s life. He is evidently a fine man in spite of his crime; he might, perhaps, repair that crime by a great repentance if you gave him time. The works of repentance ought to count for something in the judgment of the law. In these days is there nothing better for a human being to do than to give his life, or build, as in former times, a cathedral of Milan, to expiate his crimes?”

“Your ideas are noble, madame,” said Monsieur de Grandville, “but, premeditation apart, Tascheron would still be liable to the penalty of death on account of the other serious and proved circumstances attending the crime,--such as forcible entrance and burglary at night.”

“Then you think that he will certainly be found guilty?” she said, lowering her eyelids.

“I am certain of it,” he said; “the prosecution has a strong case.”

A slight tremor rustled Madame Graslin’s dress.

“I feel cold,” she said. Taking her mother’s arm she went to bed.

“She seemed quite herself this evening,” said her friends.

The next day Veronique was much worse and kept her bed. When her physician expressed surprise at her condition she said, smiling:--

“I told you that that walk would do me no good.”

Ever since the opening of the trial Tascheron’s demeanor had been equally devoid of hypocrisy or bravado. Veronique’s physician, intending to divert his patient’s mind, tried to explain this demeanor, which the man’s defenders were making the most of. The prisoner was misled, said the doctor, by the talents of his lawyer, and was sure of acquittal; at times his face expressed a hope that was greater than that of merely escaping death. The antecedents of the man (who was only twenty-three years old) were so at variance with the crime now charged to him that his legal defenders claimed his present bearing to be a proof of innocence; besides, the overwhelming circumstantial proofs of the theory of the prosecution were made to appear so weak by his advocate that the man was buoyed up by the lawyer’s arguments. To save his client’s life the lawyer made the most of the evident want of premeditation; hypothetically he admitted the premeditation of the robbery but not of the murders, which were evidently (no matter who was the guilty party) the result of two unexpected struggles. Success, the doctor said, was really as doubtful for one side as for the other.

After this visit of her physician Veronique received that of the _procureur-general_, who was in the habit of coming in every morning on his way to the court-room.

“I have read the arguments of yesterday,” she said to him, “and to-day, as I suppose, the evidence for the defence begins. I am so interested in that man that I should like to have him saved. Couldn’t you for once in your life forego a triumph? Let his lawyer beat you. Come, make me a present of the man’s life, and perhaps you shall have mine some day. The able presentation of the defence by Tascheron’s lawyer really raises a strong doubt, and--”

“Why, you are quite agitated,” said the viscount somewhat surprised.

“Do you know why?” she answered. “My husband has just remarked a most horrible coincidence, which is really enough in the present state of my nerves, to cause my death. If you condemn this man to death it will be on the very day when I shall give birth to my child.”

“But I can’t change the laws,” said the lawyer.

“Ah! you don’t know how to love,” she retorted, closing her eyes; then she turned her head on the pillow and made him an imperative sign to leave the room.

Monsieur Graslin pleaded strongly but in vain with his fellow-jurymen for acquittal, giving a reason which some of them adopted; a reason suggested by his wife:--

“If we do not condemn this man to death, but allow him to live, the des Vanneaulx will in the end recover their property.”

This weighty argument made a division of the jury, into five for condemnation against seven for acquittal, which necessitated an appeal to the court; but the judge sided with the minority. According to the legal system of that day this action led to a verdict of guilty. When sentence was passed upon him Tascheron flew into a fury which was natural enough in a man full of life and strength, but which the court and jury and lawyers and spectators had rarely witnessed in persons who were thought to be unjustly condemned.

VI. DISCUSSIONS AND CHRISTIAN SOLICITUDES

In spite of the verdict, the drama of this crime did not seem over so far as the community was concerned. So complicated a case gave rise, as usually happens under such circumstances, to two sets of diametrically opposite opinions as to the guilt of the hero, whom some declared to be an innocent and ill-used victim, and others the worst of criminals.

The liberals held for Tascheron’s innocence, less from conviction than for the satisfaction of opposing the government.

“What an outrage,” they said, “to condemn a man because his footprint is the size of another man’s footprint; or because he will not tell you where he spent the night, as if all young men would not rather die than compromise a woman. They prove he borrowed tools and bought iron, but have they proved he made that key? They find a bit of blue linen hanging to the branch of a tree, possibly put there by old Pingret himself to scare the crows, though it happens to match a tear in Tascheron’s blouse. Is a man’s life to depend on such things as these? Jean-Francois denies everything, and the prosecution has not produced a single witness who saw the crime or anything relating to it.”

They talked over, enlarged upon, and paraphrased the arguments of the defence. “Old Pingret! what was he?--a cracked money box!” said the strong-minded. A few of the more determined progressists, denying the sacred laws of property, which the Saint-Simonians were already attacking under their abstract theories of political economy, went further.

“Pere Pingret,” they said, “was the real author of the crime. By hoarding his gold that man robbed the nation. What enterprises might have been made fruitful by his useless money! He had barred the way of industry, and was justly punished.”

They pitied the poor murdered servant-woman, but Denise, Tascheron’s sister, who resisted the wiles of lawyers and did not give a single answer at the trial without long consideration of what she ought to say, excited the deepest interest. She became in their minds a figure to be compared (though in another sense) with Jeannie Deans, whose piety, grace, modesty and beauty she possessed.

Francois Tascheron continued, therefore, to excite the curiosity of not only all the town but all the department, and a few romantic women openly testified their admiration for him.

“If there is really in all this a love for some woman high above him,” they said, “then he is surely no ordinary man, and you will see that he will die well.”

The question, “Will he speak out,--will he not speak?” gave rise to many a bet.

Since the burst of rage with which Tascheron received his sentence, and which was so violent that it might have been fatal to persons about him in the court-room if the gendarmes had not been there to master him, the condemned man threatened all who came near him with the fury of a wild beast; so that the jailers were obliged to put him into a straight-jacket, as much to protect his life as their own from the effects of his anger. Prevented by that controlling power from doing violence, Tascheron gave vent to his despair by convulsive jerks which horrified his guardians, and by words and looks which the middle-ages would have attributed to demoniacal possession. He was so young that many women thought pitifully of a life so full of passion about to be cut off forever. “The Last Day of a Condemned Man,” that mournful elegy, that useless plea against the penalty of death (the mainstay of society!), which had lately been published, as if expressly to meet this case, was the topic of all conversations.

But, above all, in the mind of every one, stood that invisible unknown woman, her feet in blood, raised aloft by the trial as it were on a pedestal,--torn, no doubt, by horrible inward anguish and condemned to absolute silence within her home. Who was this Medea whom the public well-nigh admired,--the woman with that impenetrable brow, that white breast covering a heart of steel? Perhaps she was the sister or the cousin or the daughter or the wife of this one or of that one among them! Alarm seemed to creep into the bosom of families. As Napoleon finely said, it is especially in the domain of the imagination that the power of the Unknown is immeasurable.

As for the hundred thousand francs stolen from Monsieur and Madame des Vanneaulx no efforts of the police could find them; and the obstinate silence of the criminal gave no clue. Monsieur de Grandville tried the common means of holding out hopes of commutation of the sentence in case of confession; but when he went to see the prisoner and suggest it the latter received him with such furious cries and epileptic contortions, such rage at being powerless to take him by the throat, that he could do nothing.

The law could only look to the influence of the Church at the last moment. The des Vanneaulx had frequently consulted with the Abbe Pascal, chaplain of the prison. This priest was not without the faculty of making prisoners listen to him, and he religiously braved Tascheron’s violence, trying to get in a few words amid the storms of that powerful nature in convulsion. But this struggle of spiritual fatherhood against the hurricane of unchained passions, overcame the poor abbe completely.

“The man has had his paradise here below,” said the old man, in his gentle voice.

Little Madame des Vanneaulx consulted her friends as to whether she ought to try a visit herself to the criminal. Monsieur des Vanneaulx talked of offering terms. In his anxiety to recover the money he actually went to Monsieur de Grandville and asked for the pardon of his uncle’s murderer if the latter would make restitution of the hundred thousand francs. The _procureur-general_ replied that the majesty of the crown did not stoop to such compromises.

The des Vanneaulx then had recourse to the lawyer who had defended Tascheron, and to him they offered ten per cent of whatever sum he could recover. This lawyer was the only person before whom Tascheron was not violent. The heirs authorized him to offer the prisoner an additional ten per cent to be paid to his family. In spite of all these inducements and his own eloquence, the lawyer could obtain nothing whatever from his client. The des Vanneaulx were furious; they anathematized the unhappy man.

“He is not only a murderer, but he has no sense of decency,” cried Madame des Vanneaulx (ignorant of Fualdes’ famous complaint), when she received word of the failure of the Abbe Pascal’s efforts, and was told there was no hope of a reversal of the sentence by the court of appeals.

“What good will our money do him in the place he is going to?” said her husband. “Murder can be conceived of, but useless theft is inconceivable. What days we live in, to be sure! To think that people in good society actually take an interest in such a wretch!”

“He has no honor,” said Madame des Vanneaulx.

“But perhaps the restitution would compromise the woman he loves,” said an old maid.

“We would keep his secret,” returned Monsieur des Vanneaulx.

“Then you would be compounding a felony,” remarked a lawyer.

“Oh, the villain!” was Monsieur des Vanneaulx’s usual conclusion.

One of Madame Graslin’s female friends related to her with much amusement these discussions of the des Vanneaulx. This lady, who was very intelligent, and one of those persons who form ideals and desire that all things should attain perfection, regretted the violence and savage temper of the condemned; she would rather he had been cold and calm and dignified, she said.

“Do you not see,” replied Veronique, “that he is thus avoiding their temptations and foiling their efforts? He is making himself a wild beast for a purpose.”

“At any rate,” said the lady, “he is not a well-bred man; he is only a workman.”

“If he had been a well-bred man,” said Madame Graslin, “he would soon have sacrificed that unknown woman.”

These events, discussed and turned and twisted in every salon, every household, commented on in a score of ways, stripped bare by the cleverest tongues in the community, gave, of course, a cruel interest to the execution of the criminal, whose appeal was rejected after two months’ delay by the upper court. What would probably be his demeanor in his last moments? Would he speak out? Would he contradict himself? How would the bets be decided? Who would go to see him executed, and who would not go, and how could it be done? The position of the localities, which in Limoges spares a criminal the anguish of a long distance to the scaffold, lessens the number of spectators. The law courts which adjoin the prison stand at the corner of the rue du Palais and the rue du Pont-Herisson. The rue du Palais is continued in a straight line by the short rue de Monte-a-Regret, which leads to the place des Arenes, where the executions take place, and which probably owes its name to that circumstances. There is therefore but little distance to go, few houses to pass, and few windows to look from. No person in good society would be willing to mingle in the crowd which would fill the streets.

But the expected execution was, to the great astonishment of the whole town, put off from day to day for the following reason:--