commissary to arrest the husband when he left the play, under some
pretext or other, while some of the friends of Prince Louis took
advantage of the confusion to seize the wife, and carry her to his hotel.
An order was directly signed by Louis, according to which the police
commissary, Chazot, was to arrest the manufacturer Leboure, of Lyons, and
put him into a post-chaise, under the care of two gendarmes, who were to
see him safe to Lyons, where he was to sign a promise of not returning to
Paris without the permission of Government, being suspected of
stockjobbing (agiotage). Everything succeeded according to the proposal
of Caulincourt, and Louis found Madame Leboure crying in his saloon. It
is said that she promised to surrender her virtue upon condition of only
once more seeing her husband, to be certain that he was not murdered, but
that Louis refused, and obtained by brutal force, and the assistance of
his infamous associates, that conquest over her honour which had not been
yielded to his entreaties or threats. His enjoyment, however, was but of
short continuance; he had no sooner fallen asleep than his poor injured
victim left the bed, and, flying into his anteroom, stabbed herself with
his sword. On the next morning she was found a corpse, weltering in her
blood. In the hope of burying this infamy in secrecy, her corpse was, on
the next evening, when it was dark, put into a sack, and thrown into the
river, where, being afterwards discovered, the police agents gave out
that she had fallen the victim of assassins. But when Madame Leboure was
thus seized at the opera, besides her husband, her parents and a brother
were in her company, and the latter did not lose sight of the carriage in
which his sister was placed till it had entered the hotel of Louis
Bonaparte, where, on the next day, he, with his father, in vain claimed
her. As soon as the husband was informed of the untimely end of his
wife, he wrote a letter to her murderer, and shot himself immediately
afterwards through the head, but his own head was not the place where he
should have sent the bullet; to destroy with it the cause of his