The witnesses testified that Catherine-Angélique Lepeintre could neither read nor write. Yet, after her death, several letters were discovered in her pocket wherein she announced her intent to destroy herself, declared her sorrow at having escaped the waters of the Canal Saint-Martin, and vowed to throw herself into a quarry. These missives seemed to have prophesied the very manner of her end before it came to pass. However, within her husband’s lodgings, the examining magistrate also discovered the draft models for these very texts. Could a woman who knew not how to read have traced the announcement of her own demise with her own hand?
In 1820, Catherine had married Bellan, a pork-butcher established at Septeuil, near Houdan. Her mother had settled a dowry of 2,500 francs upon the young man; Catherine brought 2,000 francs in coin, linen, and personal effects, together with real property inherited from her father, valued at upwards of 10,000 francs. Champagnac’s chronicle depicts the young woman as gentle and blameless, yet asserts that she could neither read nor write, nor manage her trade without assistance. One witness described her as incapable of selling two rabbits at market. This disparaging assessment is the one ascribed by the chronicle to the depositions of the inquest; it was nevertheless destined to play a pivotal role when the letters came under judicial scrutiny.
The household was not without discord. Champagnac relates that Bellan had on one occasion seized his wife by the belly with his teeth and dragged her into their bedchamber. He notes, however, that no formal deposition attested to their domestic quarrels: Bellan maintained his composure in public, and Catherine dared not murmur against his commands.
Having quitted Septeuil, Bellan attempted several business ventures in Paris, all without success. There, according to Champagnac, he swallowed up his wife’s fortune, compelling her to subscribe to mortgage loans and subsequently to sell off her estates. By the beginning of 1828, the pair resided in the Rue des Récollets, near the Canal Saint-Martin. Bellan raised a final sum of 2,000 francs upon Catherine’s property in order to lease a shop in the Rue Saint-Jacques. The lease ran from April, yet he could not take possession until July. The wife’s inheritance thus drifted from one enterprise to another, while the household continually shifted its address, seeking a foothold in Paris.
On the 28th of June, Bellan journeyed to Orvilliers, to the house of his mother-in-law, where their eldest son resided. Catherine was still nursing their second infant. That evening, according to her custom, she went out to walk along the banks of the canal. Bellan recounted that he had re-entered Paris by the Faubourg du Roule, followed the outer boulevards, and thence reached La Villette, where he intended to purchase tools for his shop. He claimed to have encountered his wife there entirely by chance. They took supper in an eating-house, ate a little meat, and drank a litre of wine; thereafter, they walked alongside the canal.
According to Bellan, Catherine’s skirts and legs became entangled in the chains suspended along the embankment. She stumbled and fell into the water. The depth was shallower than was customary at that spot; she cried aloud. Three cabriolet drivers hurried to the scene and pulled her from the water. These drivers asserted that, at the moment of her rescue, Catherine accused her husband of having cast her into the canal. They nonetheless permitted the couple to depart together. Bellan offered them forty sous for their trouble; they refused the coin, declaring that no man should accept payment for a duty commanded by common humanity.
Catherine returned home drenched and bespattered with mud. The porter and several lodgers in the house remarked upon her condition. A few days later, she fell so grievously ill that a physician was summoned. On the 4th of July, Bellan showed Dr. Martin a letter purported to have been written by his wife. It stated that she had destroyed herself because her children were left without bread, that her husband had sold everything, and it implored him to care for them. The signature concluded with a phrase of marital devotion. Yet, according to the official dossier, Catherine was unable to read the characters she had been made to trace, nor could she comprehend their import.
Her illness compelled her to cease nursing her second child, who had been placed with the Vassons, cowkeepers in Belleville. On the evening of Saturday, the 9th of August, Bellan urged his wife to go and visit the babe. She set forth and did not return. On the Sunday, her husband feigned great alarm and repaired to Belleville to inquire after her. The Vassons soon learned that there had just been discovered, in one of the deepest stone quarries of the neighbourhood, the body of a woman whose attire answered to that of Catherine. Bellan, Champagnac records, was the first to suggest that the corpse might be that of his wife.
Catherine was duly identified. Behind her head lay a wide and deep wound, which appeared to have been inflicted with a semi-blunt instrument. At some distance from the quarry, traces of blood were discerned; at one spot, the earth bore the marks of having been clawed by fingernails. The investigators read therein the tokens of a struggle. A fragment of wood, seemingly the handle of a hammer, was discovered hard by; neither the iron head nor the remainder of the shaft was ever found. In Catherine’s pocket lay several letters addressed to her mother, her stepfather, her brother, and her husband.
These letters announced that their author could not survive the loss of her entire fortune. They declared her resolve to make away with herself, stated that she had already sought death in the Canal Saint-Martin, regretting that she had been dragged forth, and promised that she would shatter her head in the deepest quarry. Thus the writings appeared to describe beforehand the very place where her body had just been found. Bellan produced a letter, asserting that he had discovered it in a straw paillasse on the day of their removal. He maintained that he had copied his wife’s writings out of mere curiosity, never believing she would carry her designs into execution, and added that he had intended to use the sheets for wrapping his wares.
The search conducted at his lodgings altered the complexion of these explanations. There were found the master drafts of the written paper and of the final letters. To the prosecution, these drafts demonstrated that Bellan had prepared the texts and caused Catherine to trace them under the pretence of writing lessons. She could not have understood that she was inscribing the very words designed to simulate her suicide. The inquiry further brought to light blood-stained garments belonging to her husband.
The public prosecutor thereupon reconstructed the evening of the 9th of August: Bellan had lay in wait for Catherine, felled her with a heavy instrument, and hurled her body into the quarry. According to this theory, he had himself clambered down to place the letters found upon her into her pocket. This scenario was that of the prosecution; Bellan ceaselessly repeated that he was recounting the truth of the matter and protested his innocence. The broken fragment of the tool-handle, the preserved papers, and the bloodied clothes formed links in a single chain of circumstantial evidence, though the accused steadfastly rejected the interpretation imposed upon them.
On the 15th of June, 1829, he appeared before the Court of Assizes of the Seine upon two counts: the attempted homicide of his wife on the preceding 28th of June, which had failed only by hazard, and her assassination on the 9th of August. Upwards of sixty witnesses were called for the prosecution; a mere five appeared on behalf of the accused. Catherine’s mother testified to her daughter’s very feeble intellect and her utter inability to compose the letters produced at the trial. Upon a table, surrounded by the blood-stained garments attributed to the prisoner, rested the victim’s skull. The surgeons testified that the contusions observed could in no wise have proceeded from a suicide.
The defence pleaded Bellan’s previous character and the state of his affairs in an endeavour to contest his guilt. The jury returned a verdict of guilty, and he was condemned to death. He received the sentence with composure and continued to proclaim his innocence. He entreated the presiding judge to bid his mother-in-law send him his two infant children; then, turning toward the courtroom, he repeated that he would die content and that he was not guilty. At the time of his execution, he was thirty-three and a half years of age. The letters remain at the very heart of the dossier: they announced a self-inflicted death, while the witnesses maintained that Catherine could neither spell out the sentences she traced nor penetrate their meaning.