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But I have come almost by accident on the word I need to compare Mary Ann Cotton with Jegado. The Bretonne, creeping about her native province leaving death in her track, with her piety, her hypocrisy, her enjoyment of her own cruelty, is sinister and repellent.
With her twenty-three murders all done without motive, and the five others done for spite with her twenty-eight murders, only five of which were calculated to bring advantage, and that of the smallest value it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Helene Jegado was mad.
In a voice charged with emotion the President pronounced the sentence condemning Helene Jegado to death. An appeal was put forward on her behalf, but was rejected.
On the scaffold, a few moments before she passed into eternity, having no witness but the recorder and the executioner, faithful to the habits of her life, Helene Jegado accused a woman not named in any of the processes of having urged her to her first crimes and of being her accomplice.
THE PRESIDENT. Helene Jegado, have you anything to say upon the application of the penalty? HELENE. No, Monsieur le President, I am innocent. I am resigned to everything. I would rather die innocent than live in guilt. You have judged me, but God will judge you all. He will see then . . . Monsieur Bidard. All those false witnesses who have come here to destroy me . . . they will see. . . .
Until that day the witness's orders that the ejected matter from the invalid should be conserved had been ignored. The moment a vessel was dirty Helene took it away and cleaned it. But now the witness took the vessels himself, and locked them up in a cupboard for which he alone had the key. His action seemed to disturb Helene Jegado.
The door of the Professor's house was opened to them by Helene Jegado, another of M. Bidard's servants. She was a woman of forty odd, somewhat scraggy of figure and, while not exactly ugly, not prepossessing of countenance. Her habit of looking anywhere but into the face of anyone addressing her gave her rather a furtive air.
They were the Dame's confidential maid, Anne Eveno, M. Toussaint pere, a daughter of the house, Julie, and, later, Mme Toussaint herself. They had eaten vegetable soup prepared by Helene Jegado. Something tardily the son of the house, liking neither Helene's face nor the deathly rumours that were rife about her, dismissed her.
It was a barbarous anachronism, a survival which disgraced civilization. The President summed up and addressed the jury: ``Cast a final scrutiny, gentlemen of the jury, he said, ``at the matter brought out by these debates. Consult yourselves in the calm and stillness of your souls. If it is not proved to you that Helene Jegado is responsible for her actions you will acquit her.
Between 1833 and 1841 the wanderings of Helene Jegado through those quiet Brittany towns had been marked by twenty-three deaths, six illnesses, and numerous thefts. There is surcease to Helene's death-dealing between the years of 1841 and 1849, but on the inquiries made after her arrest a myriad of accusers sprang up to tell of thefts during that time.
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