Lhérot set the broth down before the customer, taking great care not to show that he had recognized him. The scar was on the left hand, precisely as described in the police circulars published by the press. The waiter at the Restaurant Véry had already conversed with this man three days earlier; he now knew that all Paris was hunting him. His brother-in-law was eager to rush forward. Lhérot held him back: it was far better to fetch the police without raising the alarm.
The customer was Ravachol. He had thus returned to dine in the very place where his conversation had left far deeper traces than he supposed. On March 30, 1892, his flight came to an end between an ordered dish and the arrival of the police officers.
Three days prior, he had endeavored to win the server over to his ideas. They had spoken of military service, of the army, of governments. Ravachol recommended anarchist journals and believed he had encountered a man ripe for enlightenment. In his deposition, Lhérot recounted something wholly different: an unsettling patron whose remarks had struck him, followed by a face to which the newspapers had now given a name. The propagandist had sought to make a convert; he had merely prepared a witness.
The name came from his mother. In the civil registers, he was François-Claudius Koenigstein, born at Saint-Chamond in 1859. A dyer’s laborer, long familiar with the hardships of toil and poverty, he had gravitated toward anarchist circles. Around him mingled social disputes, petty trades, mutual aid among comrades, and unlawful undertakings that he did not entirely deny. When he arrived in the Paris region under assumed names, he was not merely seeking fresh employment: a murder inquiry had pursued him from the Loire.
At Chambles, an aged man living in seclusion had been killed and plundered. Ravachol admitted to being the author of this crime. He had likewise violated a sepulcher in the hope of finding valuables therein. The money taken from the old man provided him with the means to pursue his clandestine existence. Later, certain witnesses would speak of the relief he dispensed to the poor; yet this devotion, whether real or professed, could not restore to the dead man the life of which he had been robbed.
In the Parisian suburbs, he frequented Chaumartin and other comrades. A recent affair preoccupied their discussions: that of the anarchists arrested following the clashes at Clichy on May 1, 1891, and subsequently convicted. Ravachol denounced the violence inflicted at the police station and the severity of the sentences. He singled out as responsible the magistrate who had presided over the trial, Benoît, and the assistant prosecutor, Bulot, who had delivered the indictment. Retaliation would target their private dwellings.
On March 11, 1892, an explosion tore through the apartment building on Boulevard Saint-Germain where Benoît resided. The magistrate was unhurt; one person was injured. The private apartments and common corridors bore the scars of a destruction that could not distinguish the judge from his neighbors. On March 27, a second blast struck Bulot’s residence in the Rue de Clichy. Here again, the magistrate escaped death; several tenants were injured, and the building was ravaged.
Neither bombing had claimed a life. Yet this outcome did nothing to lessen their guilt. Smashed staircases, shattered furniture, and blown-out windowpanes were left in their wake, exposing dwellings to violence though their occupants had taken no part whatever in the trial invoked as a pretext. The retribution announced against two men had placed at hazard all who shared their address.
The investigation traced his associates, his lodgings, and his preparations. Several comrades were arrested before Ravachol. The latter changed rooms and aliases; he had also altered his appearance. But the police description was circulating, and the words spoken at Véry’s had prompted Lhérot to look closely. Once arrested, Ravachol shifted from evasiveness to confession. He admitted to the bombings, though he occasionally sought to shield those who would stand trial at his side.
On the eve of their trial, a fresh bomb detonated at the Restaurant Véry. Ravachol was already in custody: this attack could not have been his doing. Yet it struck the very scene of his arrest and cast an immediate pall of menace over the proceedings of the morrow. On April 26, the gates of the Palais de Justice were opened with extreme caution; barricades closed off the Assize gallery. Tables had been arranged for journalists in a chamber whose entrance was under heavy guard.
The court was called upon to judge the March bombings amid the lingering shock of the April explosion. Maître Lagasse, counsel for Ravachol, protested against terror, from whatever quarter it might proceed. He insisted that his client’s head should not fall for events surrounding the case that were foreign to the indictments laid before the jury. The Procureur Général, Quesnay de Beaurepaire, urged the jurymen, on the contrary, to demonstrate by their steadfastness that justice would not be governed by intimidation.
Ravachol addressed the court. He explained that his intention had been to intimidate the magistrates so that they might henceforth show greater leniency. He expressed regret for those victims who were strangers to his design, while steadfastly maintaining the legitimacy of the means employed. The contradiction was not lost upon his judges: he proclaimed a society in which the weak would be protected, after having abandoned the inhabitants of two apartment houses to a violence that never consulted their views.
A cobbler, Leboucher, nevertheless came forward to testify in his favor. He recounted the meals, the money, and the shoes bestowed upon the destitute. His testimony complicated the convenient portrait of a common bandit devoted solely to his own pleasures. It did not erase the crimes; it compelled the court to acknowledge that generosity toward some could coexist, in the very same man, with murderous indifference toward others.
The Parisian jury granted extenuating circumstances. Ravachol and Charles Simon were sentenced to hard labor for life; Chaumartin, Béala, and Rosalie Soubère were acquitted. Thus, the first trial did not lead Ravachol to the scaffold. A second awaited him at Montbrison, for the crimes committed in the Loire.
The town was placed under military protection. To the crimes he admitted—the murder at Chambles and the desecration of the grave—were added other killings that he denied. It is essential to maintain this distinction: the man who had attained notoriety now drew accusations that could not be subsumed into a single confession. The Court pronounced the death penalty. Ravachol was executed at Montbrison on July 11, 1892.
His name continued to resonate in songs, polemics, and threats. To some, he was a martyr; to others, tangible proof that no genuine idea lay behind these crimes. The courtroom proceedings had disclosed a far less tractable reality. A man could distribute bread, murder for gain, and then appeal to humanity while blowing up inhabited dwellings. At the Restaurant Véry, Lhérot had needed to resolve neither the doctrine nor the legend. He had recognized a scar, served the broth, and summoned the police. It was enough to apprehend the man. It could not suffice to arrest what his name had become.