amende honorable, to be broken alive, and to die upon the wheel; but first to suffer torture upon the rack, to compel him to reveal his accomplices; all his property to be confiscated to the king. He was also declared to have forfeited the legacy left him by Madame Mazel.
All proceedings against the wife were suspended until after the execution of Lebrun.
Lebrun appealed from this judgment to the court at Tournelle. M. Barbier d'Ancourt again defended him before this new tribunal. The 22d of February the case was heard. Twenty-two judges rendered an opinion. Two only were in favor of confirming the sentence; four favored a fuller investigation, and the other sixteen the application of torture upon the rack, before proceeding further. A decree was made in accordance with the decision of the majority.
The 23d of February M. le Nain, an officer of the court, proceeded to apply the torture. The frightful sufferings upon the rack could not extort from the wretched man the confession of a crime he had never committed.* On the 27th a final decree was made annulling the sentence of death rendered by the judges at Chatelet, and ordering a continuance of the investigation against Lebrun and his wife for a year. Lebrun during this time was to be kept in prison, and his wife to be set at liberty. The question as to the nullity of the legacy was reserved.
After this decree Lebrun, who until then had been kept in secret confinement, had at last the satisfaction of seeing his wife and children; but the poor unfortunate did not long enjoy this happiness. Torture had broken him, grief had killed him. Eight days after the decree he rendered his soul to God, protesting his innocence and forgiving his judges.
It should be remarked here that public opinion, only too ready usually to crush an accused, never for an instant admitted the guilt of the poor valet-de-chambre. The body of Lebrun was buried under the altar of the Virgin in the church of Saint-Barthelemy; relatives and friends crowded to his obsequies.
Scarcely was Lebrun sleeping in the tomb when proofs of his innocence presented themselves from all sides. That which some had believed, which others, few in number, had clearly seen, now became apparent to all eyes. Search was made for Berry, who was found and arrested by the magistrate of Sens on the 27th of March, a month after the decree of Tournelles. Berry was carrying on in the Province a trading in horses. When arrested he offered the officer a purse full of louis if he would let him escape.
Berry, whose real name was Gerlat, was, as we have said, born* at Bourges, where his father and mother still lived. He had at first entered the service of a prelate in his native town, the Abbé Guenois; then he had been a domestic in the family of M. Bernard de Rose, and from there went into the service of Madame Mazel.
A watch was found on him which Madame Mazel had at the time of her death.
Berry was taken to Paris. He was recognized by many witnesses as having been seen by them about the time of the murder. He denied this energetically.
The suspicions aroused in the public mind against the Abbe became too numerous and too well founded to dispense with his arrest. He was accordingly arrested and taken to the Conciergerie, where he was confronted with Berry. From that moment no one was heard to speak of the ex-monk. Doubtless to avoid the scandal of a priest compromised by an affair of murder, perhaps also to spare the honorable family of the De Savonnières shame and degradation, he permitted himself to be expelled from the Church by the ecclesiastical authorities.
As for Berry, he was condemned. His crime became more and more apparent from day to day. The shirt and the cravat be longed to him. The napkin rolled into the shape of a cap fitted him exactly. He had been seen to have the knife with which the
