The Dedalus Book of French Horror: The 19th Century

by Terry Hale

  What occurred, while she was still stupefied by that slumbering of the senses which resembles death, but is not its like, a young man who had long awaited the time of the secret confinement, and had been there ever since daybreak, entered Hélène’s chamber, passing her exhausted mother and an old sleeping servant. He ran to the bed, for no cradle had been made ready, wrapped the newborn in the first linen that came to hand, deposited a hurried kiss upon the brow of she who lay there sick or dead, and then disappeared. Investigation proved without doubt that he was a student from the neighbourhood of Bourg, ‘lodging with a certain uncle of his’, and had been occupied for some months as tutor to Hélène’s young brothers. He was never to be found.

  When Hélène woke and discovered all her wretchedness, she doubtless sought her child, who was there no longer. She dared not ask for the child, for it did not seem to her right that she should have one. And all of this accumulated in her mind with the fitfulness of a vision.

  Nonetheless, as time went by she reappeared in the town and the church, accompanied by her mother, as she had done in the past. It was remarked only that she seemed unwell, that her belly had lost its firmness and that her features bore a strange expression of astonishment and terror. Like all powerful men, the châtelain of Bourg-en-Bresse had enemies; but this sweet and lovely Hélène had no enemies at all. For some days there were unpleasant conjectures seized upon and bruited abroad, but soon these were no longer spoken of. The investigation begun by the law in cognisance of these rumours among the people had been summarily halted for want of evidence. Hélène knew, however, that her unfortunate destiny had not run its course, and that Providence had more rigorous trials in store for her. But she resigned herself to this unwaveringly at the foot of altars, because she was blameless and had faith in God.

  Now it happened that a soldier who was walking outside the town while waiting for his mistress, was struck by the behaviour of a crow which repeatedly swooped down to the base of a particular wall, disturbing and pecking at the ground with his beak and scattering the earth under its feet, then flying up again towards the branches carrying shreds of bloodied linen. It would then hop from limb to limb of the tree with neck outstretched and eyes fixed upon the spot to which it had already descended, before dropping down again like a stone to recommence its scrabblings. The soldier drew nearer, shooed it away with the back of his sabre, with the tip of his weapon widened the hole that the crow had begun to dig out, and lifted from it the corpse of a child swaddled in the rags of a chemise marked with the name of Hélène Gillet. Thereupon the tribunal reopened its inquiries and according to a judgement of 6 February 1625, Hélène Gillet was sentenced, as an infanticide, to have her head cut off, for we know that our poor Hélène was noble, and in those days it was believed that steel ennobled suffering. It has since become more a thing of the people.

  Hélène’s lawyer appealed against this judgement to the Dijon parliament. For Hélène’s family took no steps, and the old châtelain even made it a deliberate prohibition that she should ever be spoken of to him again, so much could the severity of law and custom in this Roman heart prevail over the softest of natural inclinations. Two archers took her from Bourg-en-Bresse to the conciergerie of the Grand Duke’s palace, with no other companion but an unhappy woman who had not wished to leave her. I have scarcely any need to tell you that this was her mother.

  It was not that Madame Gillet set much store by the effect of her tears on their lordships the judges of la Pournelle. Too little time had passed since her fruitless efforts with their lordships the judges of the tribunal. She did set store by one judge who, when he wills, revokes earthly judgements, and in whom the wretched have never placed their hope in vain; but this pious woman did not believe herself worthy of communication with God unless she had an intermediary. She had therefore recently taken herself to the convent of the Bernardines of Dijon, under the protection of the prayers of the community, and in particular of her noble kinswoman, Mother Jeanne de Saint-Joseph, who had given up the name of Courcelle de Pourlans to become the abbess of the holy monastery. It was a truly sublime spectacle, one made to draw down the benediction of the Lord, if ever our vain sorrows manage to reach him, to see these virgins prostrate upon the flagstones of the choir, plaintive and weeping as they implored his compassion for an unwed mother proclaimed by the law to be guilty of murdering her child, compelled as they were to give voice in their thoughts, so as to disarm the vengeance of Heaven, to the almost blasphemous words which designate who knows what hidden crimes. Madame Gillet was not on her knees like the rest, but stretched out face down on the ground, and one would have believed her dead had she not released a sob.

  It must be said all the same, since no one would imagine it, that something was missing from the solemnity of this imposing ceremony. One of the nuns had failed to appear: Sister Françoise of the Holy Spirit, who formerly in the world was called Madame de Longueval, and whose infirmities had now for many years prevented her from making her way down to the sanctuary. At this time she was more than ninety-two years old, if we are to believe the hagiographies, which have her die in 1633 at more than a hundred years old, in the odour of sanctity. Sister Françoise of the Holy Spirit had fallen, in vulgar parlance, into that state of grace and innocence which leads the old back to the sweet unknowingness of children. All that she knew now of the things of ordinary life were those which related to the other life, for she was already living in that eternity into which her days had now passed, and, since her manner of speaking was already gradually marked by a knowledge of the future, the great minds of the day feared for her reason; but within the convent of the Bernardines her words were still accorded the status of revelations from on high. Why would not God have granted a glimpse of His mysterious plans to those souls tested by long exercise of virtue? As I narrate this tale now, I myself would ask nothing more than to believe this. Happily Hélène’s mother did believe it.

  She left the sanctuary only to make her way up to the cell where Sister Françoise of the Holy Spirit rested on a sack of straw, both her hands devoutly crossed over a crucifix. Since she thought that the sister was asleep, because she was still, Madame Gillet knelt down in a corner, holding her breath so as not to wake her. But it was not long before she heard her name being called. The hand of Sister Françoise groped towards her, for the saintly old woman was scarcely able to see. Madame Gillet took hold of it and respectfully pressed her lips against it. ‘Good, good,’ said Madame de Longueval, with an ineffable smile, ‘you are the mother of that poor child for whom our sisters prayed this morning. I make it known to you that she is a pure soul, chosen before the Lord, and that he has deigned to listen to the prayers of his servants, and that your child shall not die by the executioner’s hand, for Hélène is called to live out a long life of much edification.’ Having reached the end of these words, Sister Françoise of the Holy Spirit seemed to forget that there was someone with her and returned to her customary meditations.

  It was now – on Monday 12 May, the last session of their lordships’ parliament – that the report of the counsellor Jacob was being heard in the matter of the appeal of the Bourg sentence. The judgement was confirmed unanimously and in one detail made worse. The court ordered that the condemned woman should be led to her ordeal with a noose around her neck, in order to bear witness by this dishonour the enormity of her crime. The execution was to take place without delay and the unhappy Hélène was to be taken directly from the courtroom to the scaffold. Word of the outcome of the hearing soon reached the convent of the Bernardines. The sisters were to be seen without further ado filling the chapels, lighting all the candles, laying bare all the relics, beating their brows upon every altar and making a babel of prayers, lamentations and cries, as age and feeling dictated. Mother Jeanne de Saint-Joseph ran, in tears, from the nave to the choir, and from the choir to the cell of Sister Françoise of the Holy Spirit, where Madame Gillet had fallen to her knees at the foot of the prie-Dieu with neither voi
ce nor wailing nor tears. ‘I have told you nonetheless,’ Sister Françoise repeated, her serenity unaltered, ‘that this young girl will not die, and that long after us she will be praying for us on earth; for this is the will of Our Lord.’ Then she went back to her contemplation of the sky, as if it had opened up before her; and Mother Jeanne de Saint-Joseph looked for reasons to hope. As for Madame Gillet, her attention was no longer upon this scene; she no longer saw nor heard, nor felt.

  Suddenly, however, she started up with a cry of horror, for she had just been stirred from her swoon by the blasts of the trumpet which called the soldiers to the dreadful sacrifice – and the very trumpet of judgement day will not grip the soul of the resurrected wrongdoer with a deeper dread. She raised herself up, her hands on the floor, listening with a mute and ghastly attention to the proclamation of her beloved Hélène’s death, and the proclamation was renewed as it drew nearer to the convent. Gradually other sounds mingled with it, that of the steady drumming of horses’ hooves which rang out over the cobblestones, rising from moment to moment, like a stormy gust of wind, above the hubbub of the multitude. ‘There she is! There she is!’ shouted a thousand voices which formed but one, and Madame Gillet once again lost consciousness, for she realised it was her daughter going by.

  ‘Listen, listen, Sister,’ said Mother Jeanne de Saint-Joseph, wringing her hands in despair as she stood by the pallet of Sister Françoise of the Holy Spirit: ‘Oh! God in heaven, Sister, do you not hear?’

  ‘I hear as you do,’ answered Sister Françoise, recovering her sweet childlike smile ‘I hear the trumpet sounding and the horses stepping with their riders; I hear the people calling out, the penitents singing. Yes, I can hear very well,’ she continued. ‘I know that that poor innocent is with them, and that she is here now. I know that they are leading her to her death, but I tell you in truth that she shall not die. This is a promise you can give to her mother.’

  Hélène was indeed walking to her death, assisted by two Jesuits and two Capuchin monks, who in turn offered her an image of Christ which she would kiss without guile. No-one had ever seen her look so beautiful. Her gown was white, as a sign of the virginity of her soul. Her lovely long dark hair had not been cut, either because the executioner had not dared put the scissors to it or because the pomp of ceremonial executions spared the nobility this outrage. Her hair was piled on top of her head and tied with a ribbon, but the movement of walking had loosened it and some of her hair had fallen in thick waves onto Hélène’s left shoulder where it covered up the shameful rope that had been cast around her neck. This detail is not without relevance to an understanding of the rest of my story.

  And now, if you will for a moment lend me the magic wand of Hugo or Dumas, I shall transport my scene to another place. In Dijon there was a square whose name alone suggests a tragic destination. It was called the Morimont, or the Mountain of Death. At its centre there rose a scaffold draped in funereal hangings, which was reached by eight wooden steps but which was further raised upon a platform of masonry with four stone steps. All around, at a radius of some twenty feet, a fence of boards and posts had been laid as a barrier for the crowd. Within it there was the prosecutor general of the king, sitting on a folding stool and with an escort of hussars, and there were the Capuchin and Jesuit Fathers offering up their prayers for Hélène’s soul, along with a small company of archers. All along the cloisters, six penitents clad in black sackcloth, with an opening only for the eyes, made their way slowly, barefoot, with a hempen cord slung low at their waists, carrying torches and pleading a lament for the souls in purgatory. Hélène mounted the scaffold alone and halted before the executioner’s block, lifting up her heart to God. For Simon Grandjean had not yet come, since he was still finishing his prayers at the Conciergerie where he had taken Communion that morning. But four o’clock had rung out in all the parishes and the people were calling for Simon Grandjean with murmurings which soon changed to roars. Simon Grandjean was the executioner.

  He made his appearance at last, accompanied by Madame Executioner, that is to say his wife, who was his helper on important occasions. He came armed with his cutlass, and his wife with a pair of scissors half a foot long, with which she had only now equipped herself in order to cut the loose tresses which she had seen hanging free from the knot of Hélène’s coiffure. This thought must have been very much on her mind, for she dashed into the enclosure brandishing these scissors and kept them close by her. But when she reached Hélène she forgot them.

  A movement and a sign made by Simon Grandjean at the front of the platform alerted the spectators that he had something to say. This was an occurrence altogether unprecedented in the history of judicial executions, and the rumblings of discontent among the multitude were instantly quietened, as if by a sudden calm upon the surface of a stormy sea. Without doubt everything gave this scene a ghastly fascination which I shall not attempt to express by hyperboles drawn from this cold idiom; and the formidable protagonist whom I have just made appear could himself, at this point, lay a certain claim to public compassion. Weakened by his fast, his flesh scourged by the mortifications which he had taken upon himself so as to be fit to fulfil his terrible office, he was hardly able to stand and used his cutlass as support, while his disordered features made it plain that within him was being waged a dreadful struggle between duty and compassion. ‘Grace! Give me grace!’ he cried. Your blessing, Fathers! … Forgive me, your lordships of Dijon, for three months now I have been gravely ill and afflicted in my body! In this time I have never cut off any heads, and our Lord God has refused me the strength to kill this young girl! On my faith as a Christian I know that I cannot kill her!’

  This lightning bolt was not so quick as the answer of those present: ‘Kill! Kill!’ said the people. – ‘Do your duty,’ said the king’s prosecutor. And what these words meant was the same as that other: Kill!

  Then Simon Granjean raised his cutlass and, staggering towards Hélène, fell at her feet. ‘Noble demoiselle,’ he said holding the sword out to her by its hilt, ‘kill me or else forgive me! …’

  ‘I forgive you and I bless you,’ Hélène answered. And she rested her head on the block. At this the executioner, agitated by his wife’s volley of reproaches, could do naught else but strike the blow. The blade shone in the air like a flash of bright light, and the people voiced their approbation, while the Jesuits and Capuchins and the penitents cried Jesus! Maria!

  The sword came down, but the blow slipped on Hélène’s hair and pierced only her left shoulder. The condemned woman fell over on her right side. It was thought for a moment that she was dead, but the executioner’s wife knew that she was not; she tried to steady the cutlass in her husband’s shaking hands, while Hélène raised herself up to rest her head again upon the execution post, and uproar now raged the length and breadth of Morimont. For the bloodthirsty impatience of the people had altered its object, changing to sympathy for Hélène. The sword came down again and the victim, injured by a wound that was deeper than the first, fell into a faint and as if lifeless upon the executioner’s weapon, which he had dropped from his hand. You sensitive souls, so keen to feel the mishaps of any melodrama or tragedy, do not reproach me for these cruel details, for I relate them only in deference to what is exacted by my subject, with no design of my own in selecting them or giving them more weight. This, alas, is neither poetry nor fiction; sadly, it is but history.

  You can see that before proceeding with my tale I have need to take certain precautions in the manner of its telling, something which is also in the interest of the reader, who must be impelled to seek respite from emotions, to lower the curtain at intervals upon their drama, and to remember as I do, while I catch my breath, that the all too real events of which I speak are now as if they had never ever been. The dreadful scene at the Morimont only came to an end after many still more dreadful happenings, and I know not which is more distressing, whether to be the writer of its history or to have been its witness. Had I the secret
of a better style of telling, all the art that I give to it would be confined to curtailing much of its horror by reticence or in veiling it with words.

  In describing the tragic enclosure of the Morimont, I have omitted to say that it encompassed an edifice other than that of the scaffold, but it is necessary for this to be known. It was a hut of a certain manner made of brick, where the executioner locked up his ironware, his ropes, his manacles, his braziers, and the whole hideous paraphernalia of judicial murder. This execrable branch of the dungeons was called the chapel, as in Spain, and this was where the condemned carried out their final acts of devotion, when eleventh-hour remorse urged the guilty to be reconciled with their judge in heaven, and the innocent to pardon their judges on earth.

  Hélène Gillet had had no need of this place, but Simon Grandjean took refuge there to escape the blows of the furious crowd which began to cross the barriers with the awesome cry of SAVE THE CONDEMNED WOMAN AND LET THE EXECUTIONER DIE! The monks and the penitents flung themselves inside it with him, holding up their crucifixes to the people in order to avert their fury and deflect the hail of stones which pursued them.

  The masons’ guild took it upon itself to demolish the chapel, which was locked from the inside; the butchers’ guild placed its ranks behind them as a reserve corps, fully prepared for the killing. This is no matter of clever phrasing or adept style, for these are the very terms of the verbal testimony given, four days later, in the town’s council chamber, and bearing the signature of the magistrate Bossuet, the father of the immortal bishop of Meaux. Finally the men of God opened up and came outside at a sober pace, all the while singing the prayers for the dead, as if they were walking to their own agonies, and the people killed the executioner.