CHARLES FELIX LEMALR.E.
THERE is nothing surprising in the interest excited by the 1 trial of Lemaire. A total paralysis of the moral side of the imagination, without paralysis of the moral side of the intellect, is a very rare disease even in those psychological hospitals the Criminal Courts, yet no other theory will precisely account for the symptoms presented in this case. The man, Charles Felix Lemaire, only nineteen years of age, fair-haired, bright-complex- ioned, and of slight frame, son of a locksmith, that is, of a man belonging to the highest class of Parisian artizans, lazy and pro- fligate, but studious after a fashion, conceived the idea that if he killed his father he would for a moment be independent, would have a small sum of money at command, would enjoy for once at least an unrestrained orgie. He meditated on the idea for eighteen months, and thought—we are writing from his own confession— sometimes of poison as his instrument. He rejected it, however, as he himself hints, because poison was not sufficiently brutal, "not energetic enough," but in reality, we suspect, from a different though cognate reason. There can be no doubt in the mind of any person who reads the record of this trial that Lemaire, evil as a devil, was also as brave as a devil ; that he was one of a very limited class of brave men, those in whom fear is not subdued by any sentiment of honour, or by faith, or by an intellectual convic- tion of duty, or by that acute pleasure in danger which Mr. King- lake seems to think the only form of courage, but, owing to some break of connection between the nerves and the imagination, is absolutely non-existent. The writer has known one other man with the same peculiarity, and has heard him repeatedly aver, under circumstances which did not admit of deception, that total absence of fear was in his Puritan dialect " a snare." Lemaire was not brave, but he was fearless, and the idea of poison, we suspect, repelled him from an instinctive perception of its cowardice. He wanted to commit the crime openly, face to face, to give it something of the character of the duel, so as to diminish its montrosity, not to other men, but to himself. It was only as the end or climax of a series of open murders, committed tinder the
most dangerous circumstances, that he decided to kill his father in his sleep. At last the temptation and the opportunity occurred together. His father resolved to marry again, thus reducing the family income first by another mouth, then by other possible mouths, and Lemaire resolved to kill his future mother-in-law, a widow with one child. As that would be incomplete work, he also resolved to kill the daughter of the woman and his father and an apprentice girl, who would. probably witness the deed, and give information too soon for his orgie. Then he would plunder the house, and though sure of arrest—an arrest, which to a mind incapable of fear meant nothing—he should have at least one orgie with a full- purse and the enjoyments it can secure. On. the 20th of December, accordingly, hiding a sharp knife in wool', he called on the widow, with whom, be it observed, he had been, on very friendly terms, hung a rope on a strong nail in a lobby below, and saying he had a message from his father enticed her to, speak to him in this lobby. There he tried, being clearly a stupid though calculating man, to strangle her with the cord, to hang her in fact, but finding this impossible, stabbed the poor woman all over with the knife, inflicting some two dozen wounds. The mother's shrieks roused the daughter, who found the door locked, but forced it open, and the assassin was arrested, red-handed, with his sleeves tucked up, the knife in his hand, and his victim's blood spattered all over his face and clothes.
So far the story admits of the explanatory theory of insanity which Lemaire's counsel endeavoured to set up, which Lemaire peremptorily refused to accept, and which was contradicted by all the medical testimony ; but another scene was yet to come. Com- mitted for trial, Lemaire was interrogated as usual by the judge in a mode which we Englishmen utterly condemn, and which, indeed, has no conceivable recommendation except that in France it elicits truth ; and it is his answers which give interest to -the case. Any insane man who retained brain enough to give his answers would have-set up some defence or insisted on his own insanity. Any ordinary French criminal would have endeavoured to justify himself, to have excited the sympathies of his audience, to have proved that everything was in fault except his own nature—that was always gentle and holy. But to Lemaire, whose imagination on one side was vivid, but on the moral side entirely dead or non- existent, the atrocity he had committed presented itself in its dramatic aspect. For once, as he said himself, he "had played principal character " in a great tragedy, and not being moved by the fear of death, he resolved to sustain that part to the last, to represent himself as a facile princeps among the wicked —a devil with a nature which instinctively preferred evil to good, even when it did not pay. We are not quite sure that an unconscious remorse prompting him to confession was entirely absent from Lemaire, but at all events a sort of criminal truthful- ness got possession of the man, who could not feel how deeply his narrative struck horror into an audience usually lenient to atrocities. He never made the faintest effort to extenuate his acts. He had, he said, meant parricide. He was, he said, with a villanous realism only to be thoroughly appreciated by French. men, who would think the statement infinitely worse than any number of mere murders, "on the whole, very glad when his mother died. It was a month less." He " had always been lazy; was only active for evil." He "knew perfectly well he was bad. If anybody told me I was not, I should hold him as bad as my- self "—a statement almost unique, probably impossible, except to a criminal who had used the Confessional, or had been taught that he ought to use it. This man's intellect was on its moral side per- fect; he could gaze impartially into himself, could feel pleasure in a self-examination absolutely pitiless, could say decisively this and that emotion is bad, but he did not feel the hor- ror which he saw. Like a French adept in vivisection he perceived the pain, saw every quiver, appreciated every groan, but never winced with sympathy. His intellect told him precisely his own crimes, but his imagination never for an instant realized the horror of those crimes, or sympathized with the loathing they excited in other men. "You shock the feelings in my heart," said the judge : " You are right," said the criminal; but the criminal was not shocked, for a shock of that kind cannot be communicated to a paralyzed imagination, and an immovable nervous system. The man detailed his plans with a sort of scien- tific relish, though, be it remarked, as a curious feature in the case, they were very stupid plans. The intellect was analytical, but not constructive.
" In what way did you propose to commit all these crimes P—Iruit to try strangulation ; then to cut their throats with the razor that is now on the table before you ; and then fling the bodies into the cellar, the trap-door of which I had left open. For that purpose I bought the
cord you see there, and the large nail which I fixed in the wall after bending the end of it to prevent the cord from slipping off. The knife I put on the table within my reach, taking care to hide the blade under some rags, and only leaving the haft visible.
"What did you intend to do after you had done all that P—To take the keys of the widow Bainville, and then those of my father, steal all the money I could lay hands on, and quit the house. I knew very well that I should soon be taken, but at least I should have had a few days to divert myself in the meantime."
There was no necessity for heaping on himself that load of infamy. It was quite open to Lemaire to argue that he had killed the widow in a burst of passion, or even to give a senti- mental colour to his crime by alleging that he had murdered her to spare his father the unhappiness he foresaw for him, but not fearing death, not realizing in the faintest degree the in- stinctive horror of mankind at such atrocities, he spoke as calmly as if he had been on the boards, with a sort of enjoyment in the emotion he created among his audience, such as Mr. Kean feels when some evil trait in Louis XL makes the pit and gallery wince. The dramatic faculty which the man possessed shows that his imagination was strong on every aide except one—that which realizes the moral baseness of crime. He did not feel base as he spoke, but heroic, looked round, say the reporters, as he said the most callous things, for the applause which came to him in shud- ders, and the " ahs" uttered within the mouth which Frenchmen emit when surprised into abhorrence. He made his speech, too, carefully, confessed murderous plans in pithy epigrams, and detailed a scheme of parricide in little incisive, deliberately pruned sentences, impossible to a man who felt at all that his audience would choke him, if they dared. It was consistent with the character we have tried to sketch, to reject eagerly the defence of insanity, which deprived his acts of mean- ing, and the plea of " extenuating circumstances," which would have saved him from the guillotine. The guillotine had no terror for him, and forced labour in the Bagne, he being " lazy by nature, active only in evil," had. He refused even to claim his right of appeal to the Court of Cessation, ostensibly because he -did not wish to cheat society of the stakes when he had lost the _game ; really, we trust, because even in his mind some dim theory -of justice, some faint notion that he had earned his doom, some vague hope that in the supreme penalty itself might be some expia- tion, was secretly at work. There is the spirit of the Catholic penitent, who reveals everything without repenting anything, in his final speech, which we might seek in vain among Protestant criminals "I perfectly understand that there is no possible extenuation of my acts. If in a moment of excitement or of passion I had done them, I would conceive_ mitigating oireumstances. But what I did I did with premeditation. Indulgence from you is impossible, and I do not ask for it. If you accord me extenuating circumstances I shall owe them to your disdain, and not to your compassion. I want no extenuating air- -cumstances ; I will not have my life saved at such a price. He who inflicts death deserves death. Let us make a calculation. I had con- • ceived great grievances against society ; society has to reproach me ; and, therefore, I say that the account is balanced between us. I declare that if you grant extenuating circumstances, though this is not pro- liable, I am resolved to die of starvation rather than be sent to the Bagne. I want you to leave me the satisfaction of feeling that I have been judged responsible for my acts. The journals that announced my .crime must also announce my punishment ; and if I obtain what I desire justice will have been vanquished. I shall mount the scaffold without a single shudder and without a word of repentance. In conclusion, I ask of you if it would be humanity to inflict upon me a slow death, to tierce me to die of hunger when you can finish me by a single stroke ? Are we to go back to those barbarous periods when criminals were tortured, and when the executioner was recommended not to strike at the vital parts too soon? Grant, therefore, my prayer, and pronounce against me the condemnation which I have well merited. By so doing you pay homage to justice, and you render a service to society, and to cue of its members, who is for ever lost to it."
The verdict was of course guilty, the sentence death ; and Lemaire was led away, laughing easily, but perfectly tranquil, to -die by the guillotine.
We do not remember a criminal quite of this sort in England, and indeed such criminality could exist only with a most unusual combination of qualities, utter fearlessness and the theatrical instinct, clear intellectual perception and perfect deadness of feel- ing. Lemaire is a perfect answer to the theory that no devil can exist, because a devil would intellectually perceive too much truth to remain devilish, and is in that way almost unique. The only English criminal we can remember at all like him is Catherine Wilson, the sick nurse an.d.poisoner, who, while on trial for her life, felt the horror she excited so little that she learned a subtle lesson in poisoning from Mr. Herapath's evidence, and escaping, employed it to increase the number of her victims. The theatrical element seems to be wanting in her, but it must be remembered an English trial is a drama in which the accused is a spectator, not an actor. He has no opportunity of giving his view of himself, except in a speech usually written for him. In the only two cases of the last five years in which the criminal has borne his part in exciting dialogue, Roupell was as frank as Lemaire, and as cynical about his acts, though not about his motives,—the burglar enjoyed his own villainy as keenly, and felt that he was villanous just as little. Whether the enjoyment in such cases proceeds from real wickedness, as most men would argue, or from a lesion in the brain, as Dr. Forbes Winslow would try to demonstrate, we do not pretend to decide,—though we believe in the occurrence of both, and sometimes in the same subject,—but of this we feel absolutely clear. It is not morally wrong to dismiss such persons from a world in which they are as dangerous as wild beasts, in which repentance is hopeless for them, and in which they diffuse, like other putridities, a miasma fatal to moral health. God, and God only, can judge accurately the soul of such a man as Lemaire ; but man has a right to say it shall not have a human body, in which to work its will.
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