Free Little Demon in the City of Light: A True Story of Murder and Mesmerism in Belle Epoque Paris by Steven Levingston Page B

restaurant Durand on the place de la Madeleine, went to the balcony to greet his supporters and heard the crowd chanting for him to seize power:
“À l’Élysée! À l’Élysée!”
Someone cried: “Say the word,
mon général
, and we march. Give the order!”
    At the Élysée, President Sadi Carnot sat with his cabinet ministers in a state of gloom, worried that they were presiding over the death of the Republic. If Boulanger chose to seize power, there was little they could do to stop him. Most of the police force—including the few guards at the palace—were Boulangists. So were the Republican Guard and the army. There was nothing the ministers could do but await Boulanger’s next move.
    But the general didn’t act. He was of two minds: He lusted for absolute power but also adored the companionship of his mistress, the Vicomtesse de Bonnemains, a striking beauty with long blond hair and sensuous lips who was about twenty years his junior. The vicomtesse, who was waiting in a private room at the restaurant, had a grip on the general that was more powerful than the cries of
“Vive
Boulanger!” Leaving his supporters, Boulanger went to join her. Later she would claim she gave him no advice. But after some time alone together Boulanger emerged with her, and the couple went downstairs and into the street. They climbed into a carriage, and the horses moved slowly through the crowd. The couple didn’t answer the public outcry; the carriage didn’t roll on to the Élysée. Boulanger and his mistress went to the apartment they shared as illicit lovers on the rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré and went to bed.
    That night, Boulanger chose his mistress over the Republic. But his supporters didn’t give up hope. Days passed with Parisians awaiting Boulanger’s decision. Soon a month had elapsed. March arrived and still no action from the general. The government, sensing his hesitation, saw an opening and considered putting Boulanger on trial for plotting to overthrow the Republic. But turning on the general raised a host of delicate issues. His arrest could send his supporters back into the streets, and the result could be exactly the opposite of the intent—instead of quashing the threat, the action could precipitate a revolution that would sweep Boulanger into power.
    In its impotence, the government instead chose to spread rumors that it was on the verge of arresting the general. For his part, Boulangerseemed paralyzed. Tipped off to his possible indictment, he lost his will. On April Fool’s day 1889, he fled to Belgium with the lovely Vicomtesse de Bonnemains. The threat to the nation was over. Two years later so was his romance. The vicomtesse became ill—the diagnosis was tuberculosis and cancer of the stomach—and on July 16, 1891, she died at age thirty-five. Two and a half months after her death, the general visited her grave, sat with his back against her tombstone, put a revolver to his temple, and shot a bullet into his brain.
    The cries of “
Vive
Boulanger!” at the congress were meant to highlight the lingering fears of a mass uprising at the hands of a hypnotic leader. But there was something else inherent in the outburst: It was meant to scorn Liégeois and put his theories in the darkest light. If everyone was hypnotizable, as Liégeois insisted, then the nation had good reason to fear a Boulanger or any similar opportunist who might follow him. The young doctors and interns pounding their feet and roaring seemed intent on literally stamping out the fear.
    Delbœuf, white-bearded and balding, had never seen such a spectacle among intellectuals.“It was the noisiest occasion that I have ever been to,” he recalled. “I could not imagine that these scholars belonged to France which had a reputation for politeness—no, never in my life.”
    Gilles de la Tourette wasn’t finished, and he moved in for the final attack. He demanded proof of the absurd proposition that a person would kill at the command