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Updated: June 5, 2025
"Monsieur Peytel is an eminent notary at Belley; he is a man distinguished for his literary and scientific acquirements; he has lived long in the best society of the capital; he had been but a few months married to that young and unfortunate lady, whose loss has plunged her bereaved husband into despair almost into madness.
The case in question was that of a certain notary, Peytel by name, of Belley, who was accused of the premeditated murder of his wife and man-servant. Balzac had had a slight acquaintance with him in 1831, at the time when Peytel was part owner of the Voleur, to which Balzac contributed.
He wrote to Madame Hanska in September: "I am extremely agitated by a horrible case, the case of Peytel. I have seen this poor fellow three times. He is condemned; I start in two hours for Bourg."
And, almost immediately after his marriage, Peytel sold out of the funds a sum of 50,000 francs, that belonged to his wife, and used it for his own purposes.
Was Rey to wait until his master snored? "He fires at six paces, not caring whom he hits;" and might not this happen too? The night is not so dark but that he can see his master, in HIS USUAL PLACE, driving. He fires and hits whom? Madame Peytel, who had left her place, AND WAS WRAPPED UP WITH PEYTEL IN HIS CLOAK. She screams out, "Husband, take your pistols."
"Of all the events which, in these latter times, have afflicted the department of the Ain, there is none which has caused a more profound and lively sensation than the tragical death of the lady, Felicite Alcazar, wife of Sebastian Benedict Peytel, notary, at Belley.
Why not have helped poor Peytel with some of those rhetorical graces which have been so plentifully bestowed in the opening part of the act of accusation? He might have said:
Allow that Rey had the cloth on, and you allow that he must have been clogged in his motions; that Peytel may have come up with him felled him with a blow of the hammer; the doctors say that he would have so fallen by one blow he would have fallen on his face, as he was found: the paper might have been thrust into his breast, and tumbled out as he fell.
And, a most singular circumstance, the very pistol which was found by his side had been bought at the shop of a man at Lyons, who perfectly recognized Peytel as one of his customers, though he could not say he had sold that particular weapon to Peytel." Does it follow, from this, that Louis Rey is not the murderer, much more, that Peytel is? Look at argument No. 1.
"But justice has removed the veil, with which an impious hand endeavored to cover itself. Already, on the night of the 1st of November, suspicion was awakened by the extraordinary agitation of Peytel; by those excessive attentions towards his wife, which came so late; by that excessive and noisy grief, and by those calculated bursts of sorrow, which are such as Nature does not exhibit.
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