The Seven Wives of Bluebeard | Page 9

to leave her guests, she
went down to it by a little secret staircase, and in such a hurry that two or three times she
thought she would break her neck." The fact is beyond question. But what no one has told
us is that the reason why she was so anxious to reach this apartment was that the
Chevalier de la Merlus was awaiting her there.
Since she had come to make her home in the castle of Guillettes she had met this young
gentle man in the Cabinet every day, and oftener twice a day than once, without wearying
of an intercourse so unseemly in a young married woman. It is Impossible to hesitate as
to the nature of the ties connecting Jeanne with the Chevalier: they were anything but
respectable, anything but chaste. Alas, had Madame de Montragoux merely betrayed her
husband's honour, she would no doubt have incurred the blame of posterity; but the most
austere of moralists might have found excuses for her. He might allege, in favour of so
young a woman, the laxity of the morals of the period; the xamp1es of the city and the
Court; the too certain effects of a bad training, and the advice of an immoral mother, for
Madame Sidonie de Lespoisse countenanced her daughter's intrigues. The wise might
have forgiven her a fault too amiable to merit their severity; her errors would have
seemed too common to be crimes, and the world would simply have considered that she
was behaving like other people. But Jeanne de Lespoisse, not content with betraying her
husband's honour, did not hesitate to attempt his life.
It was in the little Cabinet, otherwise known as the Cabinet of the Unfortunate Princesses,
that Jeanne de Lespoisse, Dame de Montragoux, in concert with the Chevalier de la
Menus, plotted the death of a kind and faithful husband. She declared later that, on
entering the room, she saw hanging there the bodies of six murdered women, whose
congealed blood covered the tiles, and that recognizing in these unhappy women the first
six wives of Bluebeard, she foresaw the fate which awaited herself. She must, in this case,
have mistaken the paintings on the walls for mutilated corpses, and her hallucinations
must be compared with those of Lady Macbeth. But it is extremely probable that Jeanne
imagined this horrible sight in order to relate it afterwards, justifying her husband's
murderers by slandering their victim
The death of Monsieur de Montragoux was determined upon. Certain letters which lie
before me compel the belief that Madame Sidonie Lespoisse had her part in the plot. As
for her elder daughter, she may be described as the soul of the conspiracy. Anne de
Lespoisse was the wickedest of the whole family. She was a stranger to sensual weakness,
remaining chaste in the midst of the profligacy of the house; it was not a case of refusing
pleasures which she thought unworthy of her; the truth was that she took pleasure only in
cruelty. She engaged her two brothers, Cosme and Pierre, in the enterprise by promising
them the command of a regiment.

CHAPTER 5

IT now rests with us to trace, with the aid of authentic documents, and reliable evidence,
the most atrocious, treacherous, and cowardly domestic crime of which the record has
come down to us. The murder whose circumstances we are about to relate can only be
compared to that committed on the night of the 9 March, I on the person of Guillaume de
Flavy, by his wife Blanche d'Overbreuc, a young and slender woman, the bastard
d'Orbandas, and the barber Jean Bocquillon. They stifled Guillaume with a pillow,
battered him pitilessly with a club, and bled him at the throat like a calf. Blanche
d'Overbreuc proved that her husband had determined to have her drowned, while Jeanne
de Lespoisse betrayed a loving husband to a gang of unspeakable scoundrels. We will
record the facts with all possible restraint.
Bluebeard returned rather earlier than expected. This it was gave rise to the quite
mistaken idea that, a prey to the blackest jealousy, he was wishful to surprise his wife.
Full of joy and confidence, if he thought of giving her a surprise it was an agreeable one.
His kindness and tenderness, and his joyous, peaceable air would have softened the most
savage hearts. The Chevalier de la Merlus, and the whole execrable brood of Lespoisse
saw therein nothing but an additional facility for taking his life, and possessing
themselves of his wealth, still further increased by his new inheritance.
His young wife met him with a smiling face, allowing herself to be embraced and led to
the conjugal chamber, where she did everything to please the good man. The following
morning she returned him the bunch of