CAUSES CÉLÈBRES. I. PAPAVOINE. [1824.] HERE is one of the strangest dramas to be found in the criminal annals of France, and yet everything in it is perfectly clear and simple except upon a single point. This doubtful point is, it is true, the vital one, — that upon which rests that supreme question : Is the accused guilty? The crime is flagrant, horrible; the victims are two lit tle innocent creatures; the witnesses are nu merous; there is no dispute as to the facts; the accused himself confesses. And yet the human conscience has none the less contin ued to raise the question which the evidence and the facts fail to answer satisfactorily : Was the accused guilty? The accused, the confessed author of the deed, expiated his crime upon the scaffold; and yet, after all the years which have passed since that bloody expiation, the human conscience still repeats with an increasing doubt, or rather with a mournful certainty that an error was com mitted, Was the condemned man guilty? But why these strange doubts and uncer tainties? What new element then entered into the appreciation of human acts? What astonishing problem was presented by these acts, which up to that time it had seemed only natural to ascribe to the free responsi bility of their author? Can it be that a man who has committed a crime may yet not be guilty? Such is the question which was for the first time clearly presented to the judicial and to the popular mind by the trial of Papavoine. This case marked a new era in the history of human justice. It was not until after the execution of this man that the judge believed himself bound to go be yond the facts themselves and inquire into the conscience, the physical and moral condition, of the accused. From that time
physiology and psychology took their stand between the criminal and his judge. It is thus that at certain periods in human history certain crimes disappear. The law becomes more lenient; its punishments di minish and are softened, and the guilty one of yesterday is only the poor unfortunate of to-day. Sunday, the 10th of October, 1824, was an unusually warm day for the season, and the woods of Vincennes were filled with a numerous throng of pleasure-seekers. Many of them came from Vincennes itself, while others came from Paris in the public convey ances. Among these last a young woman, belonging apparently to the working-class, held by the hand two little boys, one about five years old and the other six. Another woman, dressed in red, who also was evi dently one of the lower class, joined the little group and played for a while with the chil dren, and then continued her way. A man wearing a blue overcoat buttoned up to his chin and a hat with a broad band of crape upon it, had appeared to watch this scene with interest. He approached the woman in red as she left the others and said to her, " Do you know those children you have just left? " " Cannot one caress chil dren one does not know? " replied the woman shortly; and she turned and walked away. The mother of the two boys (for it was their mother) had observed this man watch ing the children and speaking to the woman dressed in red; but she attached no impor tance to these circumstances, and went on farther into the woods with her little ones. Shortly after the sky became clouded, and drops of rain began to fall. The mother di rected her steps to a small wooden pavilion
