This will probably amuse all of two people on my friends list.

[tenlittlebullets]

I went to the museum that has the historic collections of the prefecture of police! It's a little hard to find (it's on the third floor of a police station in the 5th arrondissement, and the station isn't marked as having a museum in it), but the collection is well worth it. There are a lot of geeky things in there--a replica of Fieschi's infernal machine, repro gendarme uniforms from various points in the 19th century (the ones in Les Mis are actually quite accurate to the 1829 ones), and lots of prison registers. They have the register entry from when Saint-Just's mother had him locked away. They have the Conciergerie registers with entries for Danton, Desmoulins, Charlotte Corday, and the Girondins. They have a bunch of stuff signed "Marat, l'ami du peuple," a lot of stuff signed by the Committee of General Security, and I think a few things signed by the Committee of Public Safety. They have a guillotine blade that was in use on the Place de Grève in 1792.

But this entry is not really about the shiny, which is a matter of public record. This entry is about their one lone placard about Lacenaire. Because Lacenaire's first victim? Was a young man on the wrong side of the law, named Chardon, alias "Madeleine," nicknamed "la tante."

LOLWUT, LUCIEN AND THEODORE ARE BASED ON THE SAME GUY? I MISSED THIS MEMO

(Also, right after the part of his trial where Lacenaire recounts the murder of Chardon, he says he tried and failed to rob a collecting clerk by renting an apartment near his... in the rue de la Chanverrerie. Heeeeee.)

Comments

[lucieandco.livejournal.com]

1)Okay, this place sounds fantastic.

2)WHAT. HOW DID YOU NOT FIND THAT OUT YET? That's why it's so funny that Balzac just keeps sneaking in references to Lacenaire throughout "Splendeurs ..." (okay, I think there are actually two or three or something, but one of them - the horses quote - used to be [correctly] attributed to him in an early version but no longer is in the final one so Balzac deliberately made the reference less explicit but kept it for the informed). But la tante Chardon wasn't actually his first victim - if I remember correctly (I read his memoirs last autumn - his jaunty sermon/s re: why he remorselessly not to say proudly sticks to the career path that corrupt society has shoved him onto are not very far from Vautrin's courtyard lesson to Rastignac at times [and supposedly also part of the inspiration behind Raskolnikov], which is probably a coincidence, though, since I think the memoirs were published shortly after LPG, though Balzac was definitely following the case in the journals), he (and his mother) were the last before he went to prison for the last time. At any rate it was the crime for which Lacenaire was finally condemned to death, even though they only caught him a month later (while he was traveling on a post coach) because he got himself into a mess with forged bills.
One minor note: oddly, the excerpt from the Gazette des Tribuneaux I have locates the apartment-renting clerk-robbing episode in the Rue Montorgueil - #66, fourth floor, main tenant: one M. Bussot. Lacenaire supposedly set himself up with one table, two chairs, one bag of straw, and 'a large laundry basket' and claimed to have come to Paris to study Law. It's almost too much detail not to have been at least partly made up, so if you read the actual confession that is probably more accurate.

[lucieandco.livejournal.com]

(Or, wait, did he say the clerk lived in the RdlC? Because obviously then it matches up all right.)

[lucieandco.livejournal.com]

(Also, forget what I said about Chardon not being the first victim, obviously he must have been the first murder victim or else Lacenaire wouldn't have got away with prison sentences before, unless there was a murder he hadn't been charged for which I was dimly recalling earlier. Apologies for the triple post; my brain isn't keeping up with my keyboard.)

[sophiedegrouchy.livejournal.com]

(Okay, this is probably an embarrassing question...but who's Theodore, again? I reeeeally need to refresh/continue my Balzac over the next couple months.)