Freaks of Fanaticism, and Other Strange Events. Baring-Gould Sabine
Coulon had been hired by some strangers to meet him that same night on the road to Novawies, to plan with him the murder, by poison, of the Count de l'Isle. The whole story seemed suspicious to von Hoym. It was now too late for him to send police to watch the spot where the meeting was to take place, which he might have done had d'Avaray condescended to tell him in time, two hours earlier. He asked d'Avaray where Coulon lived that he might send for him, and the Count professed he did not know the address.
Next day Count d'Avaray read to the President von Hoym a document, which he said had been drawn up by members of the court of the Count de l'Isle, showed him a paper that contained twelve small parsnips, and requested him to subscribe the document and seal the parcel of parsnips. Naturally, the President declined to do this. He had not seen Coulon, he did not know from whom Coulon had received the parcel, and he mistrusted the whole story. However, he requested that he might be furnished with an exact description of the two mysterious strangers, and when he had received it, communicated with the police, and had inquiry made for them in and about Warsaw. No one had seen or heard of any persons answering to the description.
Presently the Marquis de Bonney arrived to request the President, in the name of the Count de l'Isle, to have the parsnips examined by specialists. He declined to do so.
On July 26th, the Count d'Avaray appeared before the head of the Police, the President von Tilly, and showed him an attestation made by several doctors that they had examined three parsnips that had been shown them, and they had found in them a paste composed of arsenic and orpiment. Von Tilly thought the whole story so questionable that he refused to meddle with it. Moreover, a notary of Warsaw, who had been requested to take down Coulon's statement, had declined to testify to the genuineness of the confession, probably because, as Coulon afterwards insinuated, he had been helped to make it consistent by those who questioned him.
Louis XVIII. left Warsaw on July 30, and as the rumour spread that Coulon's wife had bought some arsenic a week before at an apothecary's shop in the place, the police inspector ordered her arrest. She was questioned and declared that she had, indeed, bought some rat poison, without the knowledge of her husband. Coulon was now taken up and questioned, and he pretended that he had given his wife orders to buy the rat poison, because he was plagued with vermin in the house.
Then the authorities in Warsaw sent all the documents relating to this matter, including the procès verbal drawn up by the courtiers of Louis XVIII., to Berlin, and asked for further instructions.
According to this procès verbal Coulon had confessed as follows: On the 20th July two strangers had entered his billiard room, and had assured him that, if he were disposed to make his fortune, they could help him to it. They made him promise silence, and threatened him with death if he disclosed what they said. After he had sworn fidelity and secrecy, they told him that he was required to throw something into the pot in which the soup was being prepared for the King's table. For so doing they would pay him 400 louis d'or. Coulon considered a moment; then the strangers promised they would provide a situation for his wife in France. After that one of them said to his fellow in Italian, "We must be off. We have no time to lose." Next day, in the evening, a third stranger appeared at his door, called him forth into the street, walked about with him through the streets of old and new Warsaw, till he was thoroughly bewildered, and did not know where he was, and, finally, entered with him a house, where he saw the two strangers who had been with him previously. Champagne was brought on the table, and they all drank, and one of the strangers became tipsy. When Coulon promised to do what was required of him, he was told to secure some of the mutton-chops that were being prepared for the Royal table, and to manipulate them with the powder that was to be given him. That the cook might not notice what he was about, he was to treat him to large draughts of brandy. Coulon agreed, but asked first to touch the 400 louis d'or. Then the tipsy man shouted out, "That is all right, but will Boyer consent to it?" The other stranger tried to check him, and said, "What are you saying? Boyer is not here, he has gone out of town and will not be back for a couple of days." After Coulon had insisted on prepayment, he had been put off till the next evening, when he was to meet the strangers at 11 o'clock on the road to Novawies. There he was to receive money, and the powder for the King. He was then given one ducat, and led home at one o'clock in the morning. On the following night, at 11 o'clock, he went on the way to Novawies, and then followed what we have already given from the story of the man, as recorded by M. de Beauchamp. He received from the men a packet containing the parsnips, and some money – only six dollars. They put a kerchief under the earth beneath a tree, and bade him, if he had accomplished his task, come to the tree and remove the kerchief, as a token to them; if, however, he failed, the kerchief was to be left undisturbed. The tree he had marked well, it was the forty-fifth along the road to Novawies. A small end of the kerchief peeped out from under the soil. The strangers had then given him a bottle of liqueur to stimulate his courage for the undertaking.
After that Coulon was left alone, he said that he staggered homewards, but felt so faint that he would have fallen to the ground had not a Prussian officer, who came by, noticed his condition and helped him home. At the conclusion of the procès verbal came an exact description of the conspirators. Such was the document produced originally by the Count d'Avaray, and we can hardly wonder that, on hearing it, the Prussian civil and police authorities had hesitated about taking action. The so-called confession of Coulon seemed to them to be a rhodomontade got up for the purpose of obtaining money out of the ex-King and his Court.
From Berlin orders were sent to Warsaw to have the matter thoroughly sifted. Coulon and his wife were now again subjected to examination. He adhered at first to his story, but when he endeavoured to explain the purchase of the arsenic, and to fit it into his previous tale, he involved himself in contradictions.
The President at this point addressed him gravely, and warned him of the consequences. His story compromised the French chargé d'affaires, M. Galon Boyer, and this could not be allowed to be passed over without a very searching examination that must inevitably reveal the truth. Coulon was staggered, and hastily asked how matters would stand with him if he told the truth. Then, after a little hesitation, he admitted that "he thought before the departure of the Count de l'Isle he would obtain for himself a sum of money, with which to escape out of his difficulties. He had reckoned on making 100 ducats out of this affair." He now told quite a different tale. With the departure of the court of the emigrés, he would lose his clientelle, and he was concerned because he owed money for the café and billiard table. He had therefore invented the whole story in hopes of imposing on the court and getting from them a little subvention. But he said he had been dragged on further than he intended by the Count d'Avaray, who had swallowed his lie with avidity, and had urged him to go on with the intrigue so as to produce evidence against the conspirators.
That was why he had made up the figment of the meeting with the strangers on the road and their gift to him of the parsnips, which he admitted that he had himself scooped out and filled with the rat poison paste he had bought at the apothecary's.
So far so good. What he now said was precisely what the cool heads of the Prussian authorities had believed from the first. But Coulon did not adhere to this second confession. After a few days in prison he professed his desire to make another. He was brought before the magistrate, and now he said that the whole story was got up by the Count d'Avaray, M. de Milleville, and others of the surroundings of the exiled King, for the purpose of creating an outbreak of disgust in Europe against Napoleon, and of bringing about a revolt in France. He declared that he had been promised a pension of six ducats monthly, that when he gave his evidence M. de Milleville had paid him 35 ducats, and that he had been taken into the service, along with his wife, of the ex-Queen, as reward for what he had done.
There were several particulars which gave colour to this last version of Coulon's story. It was true that he had been given some money by Milleville; it was perhaps true that in their eagerness to prove a case of attempted assassination, some of those who conducted the inquiry had helped him to correct certain discrepancies in his narrative. Then, again, it was remarkable that, although the Count d'Avaray knew about the projected murder, he would not tell the Prussian President the facts till 10 o'clock at night, when it was too late to send the police to observe the pretended meeting on the Novawies road; and when Herr von Hoym asked for directions as to where Coulon lived that the police might be sent to arrest him on his return, and during his absence