Crimes of the character indicated above are numerous enough in the criminal annals of France, but they by no means constitute the whole of her calendar of crime; and in the next chapter we pass on to others not less fearsome.
Parricide--Benoit and his mother--Donon Cadot--Combinations for crime--Soufflard and Le Sage--The mysterious case of Madame Lafarge--A strange story--The Duc de Choiseul-Praslin kills his wife in the faubourg St. Honoré--Evidence clearly against him--Poisons himself and escapes justice--Suspected in Paris that special favor was shown him on account of his rank--Failure of justice in this case one of the supposed causes of the French Revolution of 1848.
The crime of parricide was so little conceivable in ancient law that no mention of it appears in the early codes. Six centuries of civilisation elapsed before the Roman law-makers devised a special penalty for the child who slew his parent. The guilty offspring was sewn up in a leather sack, and drowned in the sea; in this it was the custom later to enclose a dog, a cock, a viper and a monkey. The case of Benoit, quoted below, was by no means isolated. At the trial of Edward Donon Cadot in 1844, the public prosecutor admitted that there had been ninety-five parricides in France in the course of ten years. Only a short time before had the special penalty inflicted in addition to death, that of mutilation by striking off the offending hand, been suppressed.
The causes that have inspired this horrible offence are in all cases generally the same; either the impatient heirs, weary of waiting for their inheritance, have hastened the departure of the obstacle, or they have resented the duties imposed on them by the prolonged existence of an aged and useless parent. These reasons have too often weighed in France, especially with the peasant class, at once avaricious and greedy, and the most hideous stories of the savage cruelty of children towards their parents are to be found in French criminal records; and this even in quite recent times.
A singularly savage instance of matricide is on record; that of Frederick Benoit, who murdered his mother at Vouziers, in 1832, and committed a certain murder at Versailles, for which he suffered death in Paris. This Benoit was the third son of the Justice of the Peace at Vouziers. The father was in the habit of visiting a mill he owned at some little distance, and passing the night there. Madame Benoit, when left alone, was always a prey to apprehension, for they kept a considerable sum in cash in the wardrobe, near her bedroom. This fact was known to young Benoit. One night, when the judge was absent, an alarm of robbers was raised, and several neighbors rushed in. Frederick met them on the threshold with the news that the thieves had escaped by the window, but he begged some one to rouse his mother at once. On entering her room she was found lying dead upon her bed, with her throat cut from ear to ear. Death must have been instantaneous, but her head was enveloped in a woollen petticoat, undoubtedly to stifle her cries.