Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 01.pdf/91

 72

CAUSES CÉLÈBRES. II. LESURQUES. [1796.] IT is related that at the time Venice was at the height of its power a Venetian nobleman was struck down, in the night, by the blow of a stiletto. The crime was com mitted a few steps from the house of a baker. Suspicions were directed against this man, who was noted for his violent and quarrelsome temper. A search was made in his dwelling, and a sheath was discovered which perfectly fitted the stiletto found in the wound. This fact was conclusive to the judges; the baker was condemned to death, and was executed after undergoing the most frightful tortures. Shortly afterward the real assassin was arrested, and confessed his crime. The in nocence of the unfortunate baker was recog nized; but the innocence of Justice could be established only by a striking reparation. Every one comprehended that, — the Doge, the Council of Ten, the State Inquisitors, the Tribunal of Forty. All these great powers, composed exclusively of nobles, raised their voices acknowledging their recognition of the error, as a reparation for the involuntary injustice which had been committed. The Republic declared itself the guardian of the poor man's children; religion effaced his pre tended crime by prayers, and a perpetual mass was ordered for the repose of his soul; the judges who had had the misfortune to pronounce his sentence went into mourning; and in the great hall where criminal trials were heard were inscribed these words, — a continual warning for all future judges, — Ricordatevi del Povero Fornaio (Re member the poor baker). But now, when a doubt arises against human justice, when an accusation is made against the law and its interpreters, it is not the name of the poor baker which is invoked, it is the name of Lesurques. The whole

world believes in the innocence of this man; and yet 110 reparation or attempt at repara tion has ever been made in his case. On the 28th of April, 1796, early in the morning, some peasants walking near the Pont de Pouilly, in the Commune de Vert, saw at a place called Le Closeau, near the Fontaine- Ronde, a carriage which had ap parently been abandonded at the entrance to a little wood. This carriage they recognized as that which served to carry the mail be tween Paris and Lyons. One of the two horses was still attached to it; the other was missing. A few steps from the carriage lay the dead body of the postilion. Around this body bloody papers were scattered upon the grass. Farther along, near the Pont de Pouilly, another dead body was found; it was that of the courier of the mail. The peasants hastened to Lieursaint, the nearest town, and related their discovery. The postmaster at this place, the citizen Duclos, was already upon his steps, uneasy at not hearing from his two horses and the postilion whom he had sent with the mail to Melun the evening before. At the first words of the peasants he leaped upon a horse, which he had ready, intending to go to Melun for news of the missing ones. The place designated by the peasants as the scene of the crime was situated about three quarters of a league from Lieursaint and about a hundred steps from the road to Lyons, between the two inns of the FontaineRonde and the Commissaire-Gencral. In less than ten minutes Duclos arrived at Le Closeau, and found there the abandoned car riage, one of his two horses, and the dead bodies of the postilion Etienne Audebert and that of the Courier Excoffon.