A decree of the Parlement de Paris, dated the 3rd of December 1777, condemned Pierre-Étienne Charlier, a pit sawyer already branded with the letter V, to be broken alive upon the wheel on the Place de Grève. The Gazette records the crime in a single sentence, and every word bears its full weight.
On the 13th of November, Charlier had stolen into the chamber of Marguerite-Edmée Le Grais, the widow Ronden, and concealed himself there against her return. When she re-entered, he slew her with blows from a billet of firewood and a knife he had caused to be sharpened for the very purpose, then robbed her. The decree pronounces: murder and robbery committed with premeditated intent.
The V seared into the shoulder marked the thief; Charlier had already passed through the hands of justice once before. And one perceives, in that blade honed in advance, in that vigil behind a door, that this second crime owed nothing to sudden passion.
Yet the ruling’s succeeding sentence arouses still greater astonishment. In respect of Louis-Constant de Lavaux, priest and curé of Saint-Martin de Passel, in the diocese of Noyon, receiver of the effects stolen by Charlier, the Parlement stayed its judgment until after the execution.
A country curé harbouring the spoils of a widow slaughtered in Paris: the Gazette says no more, neither how the stolen goods found their way to the rectory, nor what the priest knew of their origins. The Parlement wished first to make an end of the murderer; in all likelihood, it counted upon his final declarations—which were taken down before the agony of the scaffold—to shed light upon the curé’s case. One longs to read what followed. It is not to be found in this issue.
Gazette des tribunaux, 1777, decree of the Parlement de Paris of 3 December 1777.