Page:Once a Week June to Dec 1863.pdf/582

572 pistols would stop us,” said Angélique, “the noose would have shown him another danger.”

“And suppose Ragouleau had resisted?”

“Oh, then,” she said, “it would not have been a murder, but a duel.”

All four, mother, daughter, and servants, were committed to prison.

But how had the police got knowledge of the attempt to be made on Ragouleau’s life or purse? This is not the least singular part of the affair. Towards the end of September, Ragouleau had gone to the police with a little invitation addressed to him by the widow. “You know,” she said, “that you always keep your word, and I require you to give me a mark of your friendship by choosing five dishes that you like best. If you don’t do it, I shall send to order ten of the best that I can get.” There seemed nothing very dreadful in this; but the lawyer declared that this was a plan arranged long ago by the women to get him into their power. A woman named Jonard had warned him that, a long time back they had sworn this, and that the day of the breakfast was the one chosen for the execution of an attempt against him. Jonard was examined by the police, and declared that what Ragouleau had stated was quite true. Madame Morin had asked her to hire for her two gamblers down on their luck and ready for anything, or two escaped convicts who would undertake Ragouleau’s settlement for a consideration. She had refused, and the widow had afterwards found Lefebvre and Jacotin herself. They were to frighten Ragouleau with the pistols, and when he had signed the drafts, they were to strangle him with the noose, and then to put his body in a sack and throw it by night into the Seine.

The acquaintance of the widow with Jonard had come about in this way:—

Every one of our readers who has been to Paris must have noticed the large Hôtel de Saint-Phar, on the Boulevard Poissonnière. In 1806 there was for sale a large house occupying this same site and known by the same name. The widow determined to buy it, intending to furnish it and let it out. Ragouleau happened to be after the house himself; but, knowing that the widow’s resources were insufficient for the purchase, and foreseeing an advantage to himself, he withdrew from competition, and offered her a loan, which she at once accepted, giving in payment an annuity contingent on the lives of Ragouleau, his wife, and their two children. There is no need to follow the steps by which Madame Morin got deeper and deeper into the debt of the shrewd lawyer, into whose hands the property of course fell after awhile. It was in April, 1811, that with a sorrowful heart the widow gave up the keys to Ragouleau. Through all her pecuniary troubles one hope had sustained her. Her chief difficulty was to pay the annuity to Ragouleau; but she was reassured by Jonard, whom she had consulted at the time of the purchase. This woman, hiding her real calling by some ostensible trade, told fortunes, and was winked at by the police in consideration of her giving them any news that she thought might be of use to them. To her Madame Morin had had recourse, and Jonard, after cutting the cards, had declared that Ragouleau and his family would all surely die within the year. There was no resisting this, and the widow signed the contract, and, although her hopes were deceived, her faith in the fortune-teller was not shaken; she consulted her till, as we have seen, when the game was getting dangerous, Jonard thought it would be prudent to acquire the gratitude of the capitalist and the protection of the police, by revealing the criminal designs of her client.

On the 10th January, 1812, the four prisoners were brought to trial. The mother and daughter were charged with a joint attempt at extortion of signatures by violence, and an attempted homicide; the servants were charged as accomplices. The attention of the audience was concentrated on Angélique: her youth, and the singular part she had played in the affair, making her an object of popular interest. Ragouleau’s position was not a pleasant one: he had published a justification of his dealings with the widow, and now tried hard to make it appear that he did not in any way take advantage of her necessity to enrich himself. The way, too, in which he had played into the hands of the police was one that he tried very hard to excuse; but, from the examination of Jonard, it was clear that the two women—the mother, by all accounts, weak, foolish, and looking up to her daughter as a goddess; the daughter a silly, sentimental, novel-reading girl—had been led on by the fortune-teller as long as she could extract money for her witchcraft without danger to herself. The counsel, in their defence, acknowledged a criminal intention; but could it have been carried out if the women had been let alone? Ragouleau knew of their intended crime, but makes himself an accomplice at the instigation of the police. Fearing to give them time for reflection, he hurries them off, knowing that the police are waiting in ambush for them. So long as the act remained undone, who could say that it would have taken place? The whole gravity of the case was in the evidence of Jonard, a wretch in the pay of the police, and utterly unworthy of credit. Angélique reads her own defence—composed for her, no doubt, but put in her mouth that her talent for declamation and her youth might have due weight with the jury. She declared that Jonard had worked upon her affection for her mother whom she saw in difficulties, the cause of which she already knew. Jonard had suggested to her the idea of killing Ragouleau—an idea she had always refused to entertain; she had only sought to terrify him, and had obtained her mother’s consent to her plan only by prayers and tears. Supposing Ragouleau had refused to sign, why have killed him? All traces of the attempt would have been destroyed, and his accusation would not have been capable of proof; and why kill him if he signed? To do so would be certain ruin. The drafts would be traced if put in circulation; the handwriting on them, the same on all, would be recognised, their origin would be known; it would be asked how persons so recently his debtors became his creditors for so large an amount, and the crime would infallibly be discovered. Whereas, if Ragouleau had been set at