Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 01.pdf/187

 164

witnesses. Verdure was arrested at his house by officers of the Marshalsea. A thunderbolt from heaven striking the house could not have more surely destroyed this family than this monstrous act, accom plished in the name of pretended justice. The three young children, deprived of their only remaining support, objects of the sense less indignation of the neighbors, fled terri fied from the scene of their unhappiness. The boy, only six years old, begged through the streets of Berville, and the youngest born soon died for want of proper care. The unwarranted investigation of the parliament of Rouen lasted five years. Yes, five years! and nothing was developed by it. At the expiration of this time the judges decided in favor of a more ample examina tion for three months. But these absurd and cruel delays seemed to some to be altogether too favorable to the accused. The procureur-general protested against the leniency which was being shown in the affair, and an order was issued for the arrest of the three children who had previ ously been summoned as witnesses. The little boy, who was only six years old at the time of the murder, was not excepted from their barbarous and utterly unjustifiable order of arrest. All this poor family languished in the prisons of Rouen, threatened with an end less accusation, and without any hope save in the merciful forgetfulness of their judges, when Providence raised up a defender for them. When legal justice is false to its duties and unfaithful to its divine mission, the spirit of individual justice is deeply wounded, and takes upon itself the omitted duties and the neglected mission. There was in the parliament of Rouen-, in 1787, an advocate named Vieillard de Boismartin; he was still a young man, not yet forty years of age. The son of a doctor at the head of the medical faculty of Paris, he possessed a noble and sympathetic nature, and was ever ready to espouse the cause of

the unfortunate. This honest man learned that in a prison in Rouen an unfortunate family was suffering, tortured in the name of the law. He gave his whole soul to the ungrateful if not dangerous task of saving them. His first care was to examine carefully into the investigation whose fatal errors had plunged the Verdures into this abyss of misery. He perceived at once the glaring errors with which it abounded. The in terest which might have armed the hand of the father or the brother against the daugh ter and the sister was entirely wanting; the contrary interest appeared plainly throughout the whole case. There were no evidences of any dissensions in this united family, of which Rose was the indispensable member. The character of the young girl was spotless; at least, it was believed to be so. She had no suspicious acquaintances, and no other role could be attributed to her than that of a mother to the family, — a position which had been forced upon her by the death of a beloved parent. The public rumor, so ridiculously absurd, had not the slightest foundation. It was, however, this senseless rumor which had influenced the examination, per verted the good sense of the magistracy, and subjected these innocents to the arbitrary rigor of the law. M. Vieillard determined to trace to their source these popular reports. He found that the first author of them was a young miller of the parish by the name of Jacques Lefret, a married man, who was a great friend of Rose. This young man, learning of the death of the girl, rushed to the house of Verdure, and presently came out in a state of great excitement. Questioned by a neighbor, he replied wildly, " No, it can be no other than Father Verdure who has killed her." This was the germ of all this evil. It was this imprudent statement which was the spark that was so soon fanned into a flame. Was it merely a wild utterance of grief, or