service revolver, a rosary, a medal of the Virgin and a holy
image.[5] Marie Boyer in the blindness of her passion and
jealousy believes God to be helping her to get rid of her mother.


[4] Case of Garnier and the woman Aveline, 1884.
[5] Case of the Comte de Cornulier: "Un An de Justice," Henri
Varennes, 1901.


A lover persuades the wife to get rid of her husband. For a
whole year he instils the poison into her soul until she can
struggle no longer against the obsession; he offers to do the
deed, but she writes that she would rather suffer all the risks
and consequences herself. "How many times," she writes, "have I
wished to go away, leave home, but it meant leaving my children,
losing them for ever . . that made my lover jealous, he believed
that I could not bring myself to leave my husband. But if my
husband were out of the way then I would keep my children, and my
lover would see in my crime a striking proof of my devotion." A
curious farrago of slavish passion, motherly love and murder.[6]


[6] Case of Madame Weiss and the engineer Roques. If I may be
permitted the reference, there is an account of this case and
that of Barre and Lebiez in my book "French Criminals of the
Nineteenth Century."


There are some women such as Marie Boyer and Gabrielle Fenayrou,