Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 01.pdf/441

398 CAUSES CÉLÈBRES.

IX.

MADAME LAFARGE.

[1840.]

ARIE FORTUNÉE CAPPELLE, the heroine of the following tragedy, was born at Villers-Hellon, in Picardy, in the year 1816. Her father was a colonel of artillery, and an old officer of the Imperial Guard. The Cappelle family was one of the most honorable and distinguished in France.

While Marie was yet quite young, she had the misfortune to lose both her parents. She was thus left alone in the world with a moderate fortune, amounting to about ninety thousand francs. An uncle, M. de Garat, took her into his family and brought her up. She thus had access to good society, and when about twenty years of age she formed an intimate acquaintance with Mademoiselle Nicolai, a young person brought up in a dangerous independence from restraint, who speedily made Marie the confidante of many romantic love adventures, in which she had played an important part. Mademoiselle Nicolai shortly afterward married the Vicomte de Léautaud, and Marie Cappelle some time later paid the wedded pair a visit at their country-seat.

It happened that a female relative of M. de Leautaud was then upon the point of being married, and the wedding trousseau was in the house, and of course was the theme of discussion and admiration among the fair guests who were there assembled. One day Madame de Leautaud brought down her diamonds, that they might be compared with the jewels of the bride, and she afterward replaced them in her bedroom. Suddenly they disappeared; and although the most rigid search was made for them, no trace of the lost property could be discovered.

Marie Cappelle returned to her uncle's house, and remained there until she married M. Lafarge.

M. Charles-Joseph Pouch Lafarge was a man about twenty-eight years of age, and was descended from an honorable family. He was introduced to Marie through the medium of a matrimonial agent, whose avowed business it was to find partners for those who applied to him. M. Lafarge announced that he was the proprietor of some iron-works at Glandier, from which he derived an income of thirty-five thousand francs, and he had, beside, two hundred thousand francs safely invested. He was plain even to ugliness, it is true, but it was a good match from a pecuniary point of view.

The marriage was at once decided upon, and took place in five days, and the ill-assorted pair set out for Glandier. While on the road they had a quarrel, and Madame Lafarge seems then to have conceived a strong aversion for her husband. When she arrived at Glandier her chagrin was increased by the discovery that the joli château upon which her imagination had dwelt was an old dilapidated mansion, situated in a lonely valley amidst dark and sullen woods.

When she saw herself installed in this gloomy house, in a vast chamber, with an alcove, adorned with five chairs and decorated with a dirty yellow paper, she believed herself the most miserable of women. The man and the house appeared odious to her; she could not live there. She shut herself up in her room, and wrote a foolish letter which she hoped would result in separating her at once from this house and this man.

The letter, which bore the date August 15, 1839, began as follows:—