LANDRU’S TRIAL.

What will prove to be one of the most remarkable trials in the annals of French crime – the trial of Landru, styled the “French Bluebeard” – will open at Versailles on Monday. For more than two years Landru has been constantly kept before newspaper readers by reason of the lengthy inquiry into the charges against him – the murder of ten women, his “fiancées,” who lived with him in turn and then disappeared from human ken, and of a youth of 18. He has been the subject of innumerable caricatures; révues have been written round him; and his supposed power of overpowering women by hypnotic influence, the dulcet tones of his voice, and the touch of his hand have formed the theme of songs sung in the cabarets of Paris. There is no doubt that Landru is a remarkable man, more remarkable, one might say, than the legendary Bluebeard, for it is averred on the authority of M. Boivin, the examining magistrate, that he had dealings with no fewer than 283 women! In the popular mind this is taken to indicate that he was capable of exercising power over women without the aid of physical attractions. For Landru cannot lay claim to good looks. He is baldheaded; his clothes are ill-fitting, and he lacks the grace and sprightliness of gesture which make up for other personal deficiencies. But he has a fine black beard, which, in the days of his multifarious wooings, was for him an object of tender solicitude. It is said that oven his manner of caressing his beard appealed to the women whom he sought to win – and he does not deny that he won them – and caused them to succumb to his spell.

Landru’s life story, such as it could be pieced together during the eighteen months he was on the rack of M. Bonin, the pertinacious magistrate who examined him, is full of interest. It is worth narrating, because it forms an absorbing study of human transgression – a departure from the path of modest ambition and the adoption of a career of swindling. The putting to death of the ten women in order to get hold of the little property they possessed has to be proved in the small courtroom at Versailles, but Lib swindling operations admit of no doubt, /or Landru was several times convicted, and knew the inside of a gaol before he was arrested and charged with making away with his ten sweethearts.