CHAPTER III.

ARRIVAL IN PARIS.

IT was towards the end of the year 1685 that my ancestor Charles Sanson de Longval quitted Normandy, leaving behind him the remains of that Marguerite Jouanne who had brought him so unfortunate a marriage portion. The events I have chronicled had almost disturbed his reason; he had fallen into a dark, fidgety mood, which increased the sinister appearance he owed to his avocations. At Rouen he was avoided with something like terror; when he passed through the streets, the inhabitants pointed out to each other the man who all over his person bore the marks of a stormy existence. Most ignored his trials; but a glance at Sanson was sufficient to identify him as the executioner; and men, women, and children recoiled from him.

For many reasons, therefore, my ancestor was not sorry to renounce his unpleasant celebrity, and to leave a spot replete with sad recollections. He hastened to accede to the proposal which was made to him of an exchange of his provincial jurisdiction for that of the capital of the kingdom. The time was fraught with grave events.

Chancellor Letellier had just died, re

signing his seals into the hands of President Boucherat, who was reputed a kind and honest man.

The Marquis de Bullion, a perfect gentleman, had just been appointed Provost of Paris. Thus the magistracy was being altered at the two extremities of the social ladder in the persons of the Chancellor of France, the Provost of Paris, and the executioner.

The profound emotion caused by the sudden deaths which had thinned the Royal Family on the very steps of the throne, the mysterious doings of the ChambreArdente with regard to the subtle poison, borrowed of the Borgias, which had been styled powder of succession; all this excitement, we say, had just subsided; and nothing could have troubled the horizon, if an act of the worst policy-the Revocation of the Edict of Nanteshad not opened for the nation a new era of calamities. I shall not enter into any digression concerning this return to an intolerance which had already fed so many civil wars in France; I merely wish to allude to the effect this event had in Sanson de Longval's exceptional sphere. A declaration of the King decreed the most rigorous penalties against the dying who refused the Sacrament because they belonged to the Reformed Religion. It ordered that in case of recovery heretics. should be sentenced to amende honorable, hard labour for life, and forfeiture of property; and in case of death, that their trial should nevertheless be proceeded with, and their bodies be dragged on a hurdle, and then thrown into the common sewer.

Another declaration enacted the same penalties

against the heretics who attempted to leave the country, as well as against those who abetted them. All the Protestant émigrés, and those reputed as such, were threatened with forfeiture when they returned to France after a brief delay, and a reward of 1,000 livres was promised to whoever could give information of or prevent a design of emigration. I hasten to add that such excesses of fanaticism were posterior to my ancestor's resolve to accept the office of executioner of Paris; otherwise I have no doubt he would have remained in Rouen. Moreover, these awful laws and posthumous penalties were little more than legal fictions, being enacted rather to intimidate than to be carried out. I find no trace of such sentences having been executed, in the papers left by Sanson de Longval. If real persecutions were devised at the time against the Protestants, it was in the provinces, not in Paris.

On his arrival, Sanson was disagreeably impressed by having to put up at the House of Pillory, or, as the people called it, the Executioner's Mansion. This abode, by no means a cheerful one, was a dark, octagonal construction, over which was placed a revolving cage, the whole edifice terminating in a sharp steeple. Before the door was a cross, at the foot of which bankrupts came to declare that they abandoned their property, after which they received a green cap from the executioner's hands. Around the house were shops which the executioner rented; and adjoining these were a stable and a kind of shed, under which the bodies of those who perished by the executioner's hand were deposited for a night.

During his short stay at the House of Pillory, my ancestor acquired a taste for anatomy; and his studies were not fruitless, for he consigned to writing many curious observations on the muscular system, and I have still some prescriptions of his for diseases of the joints. The study of anatomy and the manipulation of certain remedies were perpetuated in our family. None among us abstained from this practice; and the reader will be astonished at the enumeration, in the sequel of the present work, of the cures of patients who came to us for relief.

Sanson de Longval soon had enough of his official residence; and, as no law compelled him to live there, he sought suitable quarters in some remote part of Paris. The place now occupied by a part of the Faubourg Poissonnière was then an almost deserted spot called New France. The only buildings it contained was the convent of Saint Vincent de Paul, and a modest church patronised by St. Anne. Nowadays the church has been turned into a beershop, and the convent into a prison. Charles Sanson had a house erected near the Church of St. Anne, after letting the Executioner's Mansion for 600 livres-a large sum for the time.

The first years of Charles Sanson de Longval's residence in Paris were marked by no particularly interesting occurrence until the trial and execution of Madame Tiquet. I find many a page of blood in the annals of my family before reaching the account of this remarkable case; but even crime, it must be admitted, has its aristocracy, and I should far less interest my

readers by relating to them the execution of some obscure criminal than by the authentic details I am in a position to give as to a young woman whose fate engrossed the attention of the whole of Paris towards the end of the seventeenth century. Her trial, of which the termination was far more tragic, produced in those days as much sensation as that of Mdme. Lafarge in our time. For the sake of accuracy, I must, however, mention a few executions superintended by Charles Sanson. The culprits were: In 1685, Claude Vautier, broken on the wheel for theft and murder. In 1688, Jean Nouis fils, for the same crime. In 1689, François Mannequin, for false evidence: he was only one-and-twenty years of age, and during his trial he pretended that he was only seventeen, hoping to soften his judges. In 1690, Gabrielle Henry, wife of Jacques Piedeseigle, assistant major of Count de Chamilly, convicted of murder. In 1691, Urbaine Attibard, wife of Pierre Barrois, aged thirty-five, who, having poisoned her husband, was sentenced to amende honorable, to have her fist struck off, and to be hanged; her body to be burnt, and her ashes to be scattered to the wind. And lastly, Claire Lermenet, wife of Michel Cloqueteur, servant of M. de Breteuil, put to death, after horrible tortures, for common theft.