As his only reply, the doctor pointed to the place of Madame de Larcy, (as Lalaurie was called in this story), which was empty. At that moment, the sound of a carriage was heard: everyone hurried to the window…a caleche, driven by a negro, appeared and passed rapidly under the balcony. Madame de Larcy was seated there, calm and proud, holding in her hand a bouquet of heliotrope.
–L. Souvestre, 1838
After her flight from New Orleans, Madame Lalaurie set up residence in Paris. It is assumed that she stayed at one of the family homes of the Macartys or possibly at the Pontalba residence (the Tallyrand building), which was once used as the French Consulate in Paris. She had her six-year-old son by Louis Lalaurie, Jean Louis, with her. She also had three of her adult children by Jean Blanque: her daughters Pauline and Laure and her son Paulin.
What could have been an early report of Madame Lalaurie appeared in Le Courier des Estates-Unis on December 8, 1838. Written by L. Souvestre, who cannot be identified, the piece related the story as told by a Methodist minister, Dr. Miller. In this narrative, Dr. Miller is a guest at the French estate of Henri Vrain. (The Vrains were relatives of the Delassus family.) Dr. Miller recognizes a fellow guest, known to the others as Madame de Larcy, as the notorious Madame Lalaurie. After searching his troubled soul, he tells the other guests of her gruesome actions. Madame Lalaurie flees from the estate at the end of the tale and into obscurity once again.
This narrative is melodramatic and reads more like a piece of short fiction than an account of an actual event. However, it is an interesting representation of what Madame might have faced in the tight communities of the French and French Creoles. (See more on the L. Souvestre story in the seventh chapter.)
The Pontalba estate, probable residence of the Lalaurie family during their exile to France. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
More probable, though, is that Madame was not hiding at all. She could not be prosecuted in France for what she had allegedly done in New Orleans. Her whereabouts were no secret. Jeanne (Delphine’s daughter by Jean Blanque) visited her mother in Paris in the late 1830s with her children and husband, Auguste Delassus, as shown by the numerous pieces of correspondence found in the Missouri History Archives. (Auguste Delassus wrote to his father about a deplorable trip they took to stay with the Lalauries at their estate in Aquitaine. Whether this is the same trip that spurred Delphine’s son Paulin to dub the Lalaurie family “jackasses” is unclear.)
Madame Lalaurie gave power of attorney to Jeanne’s husband, Auguste Delassus, before she fled New Orleans. Eventually, Jeanne and Delassus separated. Auguste was settling the town of Delassus, Missouri, during the last years of Delphine’s life. There is correspondence between Delassus and Delphine regarding her financial welfare and her mental health. (One can only speculate about the inner demons that may have tormented Delphine. Did she feel guilt for her role in the atrocities of 1834? Was she suffering residual anxiety from her abusive marriage to Louis Lalaurie? Or was her complex psyche simply crumbling under the stress of her exile?) Reading Delphine’s correspondence with Delassus leads one to believe that she did not suffer from guilt. Any angst in the subtext of the letters is well hidden.
Located in Aquitaine, France, the Lalaurie estate is now a bed-and-breakfast. Louis Lalaurie’s family chateau is the site of Madame’s humiliating visit as told by her son-in-law, Auguste Delassus. Lalaurie estate.
Jeanne accompanied her mother back to New Orleans about 1842. Laure, Paulin and Pauline resided with Delphine in Paris as late as 1838; they probably fled New Orleans with her after the fire. But Laure maintained her New Orleans residence while she was in France and, by 1842, was back in New Orleans. Receipts show that she was living in the Vieux Carré.
Directories indicate that two of Madame Lalaurie’s unmarried daughters, Jeanne and Pauline, returned to New Orleans to live next door to their mother in the mid-1840s. Her son, Paulin, returned to New Orleans and married Felicite Amanda Andry between 1851 and 1853. He fathered two children and died on September 22, 1868.
Madame Lalaurie’s eldest daughter, Borquita, lived in New Orleans her entire life, and there is no evidence that she visited her mother during her exile.
Madame Lalaurie thrived in Paris; she seemed to be able to thrive anywhere. She conducted business from France, paying her taxes and financing the repair of a residence in New Orleans (Faubourg Marigny) that was rented out. Records indicate that Madame returned to New Orleans and lived in this house until her death in 1857 or 1858. (See the sixth chapter.)
As for Madame’s younger son, he starts to speak for himself as early as age twelve. Louis Lalaurie wrote to his uncle about joining his mother in the country after he had a surgery to improve his hearing. This indicates that Madame was living a life similar to her New Orleans existence—a residence in town, as well as a rural retreat. It would seem that Delphine had a busy social life and not many financial worries at this point in time.
From about 1840 on, however, a different tone appears in Delphine Lalaurie’s correspondence to her son-in-law, Auguste Delassus. In a letter from the Delassus–St. Vrain Collection, she inquires repeatedly about her money and Auguste’s lack of response to her letters and expresses her angst over the situation:
31 May 1842 ALS
Lalaurie nee Macarty to Auguste Delassus
My Dear Delassus,
I don’t know what to attribute the delay to that you have caused in sending me the draft that you are announcing to me in the letter that you wrote to me via Doctor Thomas. What I can tell you is that I have found myself in a painful and most embarrassing position seeing that since the month of last June, I haven’t drawn on you. After having waited in vain for the various steamships, which have arrived for some time, that I would receive some news of my affairs, I have been obliged to put my signature out, still hoping that in the interval that would lapse until the due date of the promissory note, I would be able to receive some money; but what was my disappointment and my fears when I saw that my signature could be protested, for they could have been able to refuse to renew my promissory note. It was therefore necessary for me to take some money at an exorbitant premium: I paid 4,80 [piastres]: you see what an enormous loss I take. It is Mr. Artigue, son-in-law of Mr. Shiff, who will draw on you. The drafts will leave on the June 4 boat.
I don’t know what to think about your silence toward me since my brother receives letters from you very often. You have announced the state of my affairs to me several times and since the departure of Placide for France, the time at which you were put in charge of them, I still have not been able to receive news of them. I earnestly pray you make the news arrive to me as soon as you receive this letter, and if the drafts that you were announcing to me haven’t left, to send me in place of the first sum asked for, fifteen hundred piastres to complete the five thousand piastres, which I need for my expenses for the year. If the management of my affairs was distracting you from your other occupations, you could ask Placide to take charge of them. I hope that he will not refuse to do so.
Tell Jeanne that I received her letter of 18 April, which gave me so much pleasure since it had been a long time that we were without news, and that which she gave me was good. I was very happy the children were over the measles and that you were all in good health at that time. Nevertheless, Delphine’s [Borquita’s] little Octave was still convalescing. I hope that he recovered completely soon after Jeanne Wrote me. Please witness to Delphine my satisfaction to have learned of her happy deliver, but tell her at the same time, that I was not so satisfied when I learned she was still pregnant. Nonetheless, I don’t love her dear little daughter less, whom I would like to be able, with all the others, to kiss and press to my heart.
We have learned indirectly of the nominations of Placide as comptroller of the banks. They told us that it was worth four thousand piastres a year for him. Since this piece of news was announced to us by two people who learned of it by letters that they had received, we do not in delivering satisfaction that it must naturally inspire us with to expose us to disappointment to which one can often await in adding faith to the news which is distributed here. In the position of Placide, nine children, Jeanne and himself to support, I consider that a position [paying] four thousands piastres would be a great help to him. May the circumstances become favorable to him and may they repair, a little the losses that he has had.
The news of the reunion of your father and the rest of you made me feel a great pleasure. His separation from his sister must have cost him a lot, but the circumstance that brought it will have without a doubt rendered it less painful by thinking that the company of his grandchildren would procure him a little more distraction. The presence of young people in a house always fills it with more gaiety and liveliness.
Kiss your father for me. Give my greetings to your aunt. I reunite you all in my heart to love you and kiss you for me, Pauline and Louis [child].
Delphine’s son Paulin wrote to his brother-in-law, Auguste Delassus, that his mother seemed to be using the dire straits of her finances in Louisiana as a catalyst to return to New Orleans. Her children were appalled to even contemplate such an action. But as always, Delphine would do as she pleased.