New-York tribune., 1920-05-16

assassination of twenty women.
Besides, the case of the celebrated d
Henri Landru, the Bluebeard of
Gambais, is still pending in the
French courts; and as if the fresh
harvest were not enough "Le Fl
caro-" of Paris, discloses the fact
that this is the centenary of the
famous wholesale woman killer of
Lyons, Lelievre, who, just a hun
dred years ago, operated under the
nom de guerre Chevallier and end
ed his life on the guillotine.
The Original Bluebeard
Where does the term Bluebeard
originate? The story has been fre-
quently told Tradition has it that
there lived in northwestern France,
in the time of the Hundred Years
War, between that country and Eng
land, a nobleman, called Giles de
Laval, Baron de Retz. He was a
gallant fighter against the English,
but his title to fame rests on the dia-
bollcal cruelty with which he ex-
terminated dozen or so of his sue
cassive wives. He might possibly
have reached the hundred mark, but
Tor some trivial offense he commit
Ted against his overload, the Duke
Of Brittany. Wife-killing, if done
with discretion, was, if not con-
doned, at least overlooked in those
days; but disloyalty to the ruler was
objectionable, and poor GILES was
turned at the stake near Nantes.
Doubt prevails whether Giles de
Laval was the historic prototype of
the famous French novel of the sew
enteenth century which made the
term Bluebeard a byword in all
languages. In the book, which is
by Charles Perrault, the celebrated
soory-teller, the hero, the knight
Raoul, surnamed Barbe-Bleue after
his rich facial ornament of blue
black color, married seven wives in
succession. Six Of these disap-
Feared without leaving a trace; the
seventh became their avenger, in
the following queer manner.
Fatima Not Among the Trophies
Raoul, having to leave his castle
on important business, entrusts his
bundle of keys to Fatima, the sew
enth Nine. Barbe-Bleue, with the
injunction that, while she may go
around freely, she must not enter
one particular chamber in a tur
ret. Needless to say, Fatima can
not resist the temptation, opens the
door of the forbidden compartment
and beholds the cory remnants of
her six predecessors.
Raoul returns, discovers blood on
the keys and thus learns that Fa-
TINA, like the six previous women,
failed in the supreme test of
marital obedience. So he proceeds
to slaughter her, just the way he
slaughtered the others; but this
time the brothers of the lady arrive
just in the nick of time and Sat
tackled him tiercely, and ran him
through and soon he was mortallv
wounded"
Perrault may have known the
story of Giles de Laval, but much
more familiar prototype of the pro-
fesslonal wlfe-slayer exists in "The
Arabian Nights where, in fact, he
occurs twice, first in the fictitious
framework of the story itself. Sche-
herazade IS induced to spin her yarn
over 1901 nights in order to es-
cape execution on the morrow of the
bridal night, an unpleasant formal
lty to which her peevish husband
|i"o1'iy ouUJcCtSU MS DrlQcS. then
she tells, in the course of her narra-
ton, tale very closely resembling
that of Perraults.
In some form or other the Blue
beard occurs in the literature and
folklore of many lands and peoples.
Before Perrault the motif was
worked into fiction by two sixteenth
century Italians, Straparola and
(lan Alesio Abbatutis; there exists
Il herman folktale Bluebard, too.
recorded in Grimm's celebrated COL
lection. A version surprisingly
similar to the Perrault story sur
wives in the popular legends of
Esthonia.
A Brittany Favorite
But Brittany seems to be the
favorite hunting ground of the
woman-eater; the legend of Co.
morre, or Conomor, the Breton chief
who murdered series of wives and