464
The Green Bag,
Down to this point, the only substantial reality is the safe; which by itself obviously is not enough for the purposes of the scheme. But certain alleged violations of this supposi titious agreement ere made to furnish a basis for fictitious litigation between the Crawfords and Mme. Humbert, which, in various forms, has occupied the attention of the French tribunals, up to the supreme Court of Cassation, for a dozen years or more; involving complicated and voluminous proceedings, with several judgments in her favor, and appearing to establish the exist ence of the fortune, and her possession of and title to it. The records of the litigation and the judgments were real and genuine. The Crawfords were, of course, imaginary personages, represented when necessary by Mme. Humbert's husband and her brothers Emile and Romain Daurignac, her accom plices in the scheme and co-defendants in the trial. The judgments in her favor are thus easily accounted for. By means of her story, corroborated by the safe and the official records of the litiga tion, Mane. Humbert borrowed from banks and money-lenders, from time to time, the capital upon which she exploited herself and her various enterprises, to the amount of between sixty and seventy millions of francs; of which something like seventeen millions was repaid, leaving an indebtedness of about fifty millions at the time of the catastrophe. The bubble was finally punctured by a judi cial order, May 19, 1902, for examination of the contents of the safe; which, being opened by the authorities, was found to contain one English penny piece, and nothing more. The Humberts and Daurignacs fled to Madrid, where they were arrested in December, 1902, and brought to Paris for trial upon charges of forgery and swindling. The wild absurdity of this performance would be wholly and irresistibly humorous, but for the shadow cast upon it by the ruin of the victims of the Rentes Viagères and
many of Mme. Humbert's creditors, and the darker and mysterious interest which it bor rows from the murder of the banker Schottsman, a creditor to a large amount, in a rail way train between Paris and Lille, the sui cide of the banker Girard, another principal creditor, and the death by suicide or murder of Frederic Humbert's nephew and name sake. Apparently, however, no guilty con nection of the Humbert-Daurignac group with these tragic events has ever been estab lished. It will be seen that Mme. Humbert's ap parently complicated scheme, reduced to its elements, has the simplicity of genius. The central conception is the obtaining oí credit by means of collusive litigation over an im mense sum of money. This involves nothing but the personation, so far as necessary, of two or three non-existent characters. All the rest is comparatively simple detail. In fact, little or no actual personation of the mythical Crawfords appears to have become essen tial. The eminent advocates who at one time or another appeared on that side of the litigation received their instruc tions from a notary at Havre, supposed to be in direct communication with the Crawfords, and authorized to represent them, and the proceedings were so managed as not to call for their appearance in the flesh before any judicial tribunal. Whether this notary was a dupe or an accomolice does not yet appear to be determined. The scheme would have been possible in our own country, and probably in any other. The fourteenth day of August, the sixth of the Humbert trial, was a genuine American dog-day in Paris. The Court of Assises sits in the Palais de Justice on the north bank of the Seine, in a handsome and spacious cham ber, much longer than the average American court room, but lighted and ventilated only by a row of windows high above the floor on a single side. It was densely crowded in every part, a brilliant bouquet of feminine
