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.  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.  Lawyers will doubtless remind us that Madame Lalaurie was not legally chargeable with the child’s death.  The lady at the window was not the only witness who might have been brought.  A woman still living, who after the civil war was for years a domestic in this “haunted house,” says her husband, now long dead, then a lad, was passing the place when the child ran out on the roof, and he saw her scrambling about on it seeking to escape.  But he did not see the catastrophe that followed.  No one saw more than what the law knows as assault; and the child was a slave.

Miss Martineau, in her short account of the matter, which she heard in New Orleans and from eye-witnesses only a few years after it had occurred, conjectures that Madame Lalaurie’s object in buying back these slaves was simply to renew her cruelties upon them.  But a much easier, and even kinder, guess would be that they knew things about her that had not been and must not be told, if she could possibly prevent it.  A high temper, let us say, had led her into a slough of misdoing to a depth beyond all her expectation, and the only way out was on the farther side.

Yet bring to bear all the generous conjecture one can, and still the fact stands that she did starve, whip, and otherwise torture these poor victims.  She even mistreated her daughters for conveying to them food which she had withheld.  Was she not insane?  One would hope so; but we cannot hurry to believe just what is most comfortable or kindest.  That would be itself a kind of “emotional insanity.”  If she was insane, how about her husband?  For Miss Martineau, who was told that he was no party to her crimes, was misinformed; he was as deep in the same mire as passive complicity could carry him.  If she was insane her insanity stopped abruptly at her plump, well-fed coachman.  He was her spy against all others.  And if she was insane, then why did not her frequent guests at table suspect it?

All that society knew was that she had carried her domestic discipline to excess, had paid dearly for it, and no doubt was desisting and would henceforth desist from that kind of thing.  Enough allowance can hardly be made in our day for the delicacy society felt about prying into one of its own gentleman or lady member’s treatment of his or her own servants.  Who was going to begin such an inquiry—­John Fitz Miller?