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Who was going to begin such an inquiry John Fitz Miller? And so time passed, and the beautiful and ever sweet and charming Madame Lalaurie whether sane or insane we leave to the doctors, except Dr.
Yet rumors and suspicious indications grew so rank that at length another prominent citizen, an "American" lawyer, who had a young Creole studying law in his office, ventured to send him to the house to point out to Madame Lalaurie certain laws of the State.
However, let the moral wait or skip it entirely if you choose: a regular feature of that bright afternoon throng was Madame Lalaurie's coach with the ever-so-pleasant Madame Lalaurie inside and her sleek black coachman on the box. "Think," some friend would say, as he returned her courteous bow "think of casting upon that woman the suspicion of starving and maltreating her own house-servants!
From what came to light at a later season, it is hard to think that in this earlier case the investigation was more than superficial. Yet an investigation was made, and some legal action was taken against Madame Lalaurie for cruelty to her slaves. They were taken from her and liberated? Ah! no. They were sold by the sheriff, bid in by her relatives, and by them sold back to her.
Madame Lalaurie is gone! The brave coachman one cannot help admiring the villain's intrepidity turned and drove back towards the city. What his plan was is not further known. No wonder if he thought he could lash and dash through the same mob again. But he mistook. He had not reached town again when the crowd met him. This time they were more successful. They stopped the horses killed them.
Madame Lalaurie begs them, with all her sweetness, to come other ways and consider other things. But here is Lefebre. He cries, "I have found some of them! I have broken some bars, but the doors are locked!" Judge Canonge hastens through the smoke. They reach the spot. "Break the doors down!" Down come the doors. The room they push into is a "den." They bring out two negresses.
She may have dwelt in the house earlier than this, but here is where its tragic history begins. Madame Lalaurie was still a beautiful and most attractive lady, though bearing the name of a third husband. Her surname had been first McCarty, a genuine Spanish-Creole name, although of Irish origin, of course, then Lopez, or maybe first Lopez and then McCarty, and then Blanque.
He was at that very time master of Salome Muller, and of "several others fairer than Salome." He belongs in the present story only here in this landscape, and here not as a typical, but only as an easily possible, slaveholder. For that matter, Madame Lalaurie, let it be plainly understood, was only another possibility, not a type.
She had two daughters, the elder, at least, the issue of her first marriage. The house is known to this day as Madame Blanque's house, which, you notice, it never was, so distinctly was she the notable figure in the household. Her husband was younger than she. There is strong sign of his lesser importance in the fact that he was sometimes, and only sometimes, called doctor Dr. Louis Lalaurie.
Let us believe that this is what occurred, or at least was shammed; for unless we do we must accept the implication of a newspaper statement of two or three years afterwards, and the confident impression of an aged Creole gentleman and notary still living who was an eye-witness to much of this story, that all Madame Lalaurie ever suffered for this part of her hideous misdeeds was a fine.
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