IN A LETTER TO EDWARD BRIEFLESS, ESQUIRE, OF PUMP COURT, TEMPLE.
PARIS, November, 1839.
MY DEAR BRIEFLESS,--Two months since, when the act of accusation first appeared, containing the sum of the charges against Sebastian Peytel, all Paris was in a fervor on the subject.The man's trial speedily followed, and kept for three days the public interest wound up to a painful point.He was found guilty of double murder at the beginning of September; and, since that time, what with Maroto's disaffection and Turkish news, we have had leisure to forget Monsieur Peytel, and to occupy ourselves with [Greek text omitted].Perhaps Monsieur de Balzac helped to smother what little sparks of interest might still have remained for the murderous notary.Balzac put forward a letter in his favor, so very long, so very dull, so very pompous, promising so much, and performing so little, that the Parisian public gave up Peytel and his case altogether; nor was it until to-day that some small feeling was raised concerning him, when the newspapers brought the account how Peytel's head had been cut off at Bourg.
He had gone through the usual miserable ceremonies and delays which attend what is called, in this country, the march of justice.He had made his appeal to the Court of Cassation, which had taken time to consider the verdict of the Provincial Court, and had confirmed it.He had made his appeal for mercy; his poor sister coming up all the way from Bourg (a sad journey, poor thing!) to have an interview with the King, who had refused to see her.Last Monday morning, at nine o'clock, an hour before Peytel's breakfast, the Greffier of Assize Court, in company with the Cure of Bourg, waited on him, and informed him that he had only three hours to live.At twelve o'clock, Peytel's head was off his body: an executioner from Lyons had come over the night before, to assist the professional throat-cutter of Bourg.
I am not going to entertain you with any sentimental lamentations for this scoundrel's fate, or to declare my belief in his innocence, as Monsieur de Balzac has done.As far as moral conviction can go, the man's guilt is pretty clearly brought home to him.But any man who has read the "Causes Celebres," knows that men have been convicted and executed upon evidence ten times more powerful than that which was brought against Peytel.His own account of his horrible case may be true; there is nothing adduced in the evidence which is strong enough to overthrow it.It is a serious privilege, God knows, that society takes upon itself, at any time, to deprive one of God's creatures of existence.But when the slightest doubt remains, what a tremendous risk does it incur!
In England, thank heaven, the law is more wise and more merciful:
an English jury would never have taken a man's blood upon such testimony: an English judge and Crown advocate would never have acted as these Frenchmen have done; the latter inflaming the public mind by exaggerated appeals to their passions: the former seeking, in every way, to draw confessions from the prisoner, to perplex and confound him, to do away, by fierce cross-questioning and bitter remarks from the bench, with any effect that his testimony might have on the jury.I don't mean to say that judges and lawyers have been more violent and inquisitorial against the unhappy Peytel than against any one else; it is the fashion of the country: a man is guilty until he proves himself to be innocent; and to batter down his defence, if he have any, there are the lawyers, with all their horrible ingenuity, and their captivating passionate eloquence.It is hard thus to set the skilful and tried champions of the law against men unused to this kind of combat; nay, give a man all the legal aid that he can purchase or procure, still, by this plan, you take him at a cruel, unmanly disadvantage; he has to fight against the law, clogged with the dreadful weight of his presupposed guilt.
Thank God that, in England, things are not managed so.
However, I am not about to entertain you with ignorant disquisitions about the law.Peytel's case may, nevertheless, interest you; for the tale is a very stirring and mysterious one; and you may see how easy a thing it is for a man's life to be talked away in France, if ever he should happen to fall under the suspicion of a crime.The French "Acte d'accusation" begins in the following manner:--"Of all the events which, in these latter times, have afflicted the department of the Ain, there is none which has caused a more profound and lively sensation than the tragical death of the lady, Felicite Alcazar, wife of Sebastian Benedict Peytel, notary, at Belley.At the end of October, 1838, Madame Peytel quitted that town, with her husband, and their servant Louis Rey, in order to pass a few days at Macon: at midnight, the inhabitants of Belley were suddenly awakened by the arrival of Monsieur Peytel, by his cries, and by the signs which he exhibited of the most lively agitation: he implored the succors of all the physicians in the town; knocked violently at their doors; rung at the bells of their houses with a sort of frenzy, and announced that his wife, stretched out, and dying, in his carriage, had just been shot, on the Lyons road, by his domestic, whose life Peytel himself had taken.
"At this recital a number of persons assembled, and what a spectacle was presented to their eyes.
"A young woman lay at the bottom of a carriage, deprived of life;her whole body was wet, and seemed as if it had just been plunged into the water.She appeared to be severely wounded in the face;and her garments, which were raised up, in spite of the cold and rainy weather, left the upper part of her knees almost entirely exposed.At the sight of this half-naked and inanimate body, all the spectators were affected.People said that the first duty to pay to a dying woman was, to preserve her from the cold, to cover her.A physician examined the body; he declared that all remedies were useless; that Madame Peytel was dead and cold.