Le Petit Matin
- Serious Incidents Break Out Again on the S.E. Frontier
- A Few Moments with... in the Pas-Perdus
- The Harpy Will Atone
Le Petit Matin's front page of 3 November 1926 reported a fresh flare-up on the Franco-Italian frontier at Ventimiglia. Fascists there bullied French railwaymen, threatened to sabotage French trains and marched on the French consulate with rifles and clubs, until the police stepped in and arrested a man who had got inside. In Raymond Colrat's lobby column, a Socialist deputy joked about the writers lined up for the party's coming newspaper, then warned that the congress decision to run complete lists in every department could hand seats to the right. A short dispatch from Douai announced the death sentence passed on Marie Lefebvre, who had shot her pregnant daughter-in-law.
Translation
Serious Incidents Break Out Again on the S.E. Frontier
Disappointed, a fascist officer then snatched from an engine driver's lips the cigarette he was smoking, declaring that "one does not smoke in the presence of a fascist." Meanwhile, the Ventimiglia police had been alerted. The superintendent sent the militia to guard the French Consulate and had the approaches to the station cleared, where the fascists were threatening to sabotage the departure of the French trains. When someone shouted "Look out, the police!", the "black shirts" headed for the Consulate, brandishing rifles and clubs. The police had set up a cordon, but one fascist, slipping past the guard, got into the Consulate and harangued his comrades from a balcony. He was arrested.
A Few Moments with... in the Pas-Perdus
A Socialist deputy passes by: "We are waiting for our new organ; certainly, comrade Blum will be read with satisfaction. Citizen Louquet will have his customers; M. Renaudel may well have no readers but those who suffer from chronic insomnia." — "Yet you did good work at the Congress?" — "If you like... It is evident that no crack appeared in the party. Still, certain decisions struck me as rather unfortunate; presenting a complete list in every department may well be a danger, for without meaning to, and while seeking the opposite effect, we will favour the candidates of the right to the detriment of ourselves and of our friends on the left."
The Harpy Will Atone
DOUAI, November 2. — Mme Marie Lefebvre, the wife of a very rich industrialist, who had murdered her pregnant daughter-in-law with a revolver shot in the automobile her son was driving, has been sentenced to death. The horrible harpy showed no regret for her act. Her attitude during the proceedings several times provoked hostile demonstrations from the audience.
Context
Italy in the days of the Ventimiglia incidents
Le Petit Matin printed its account of fascists harassing French railwaymen and besieging the French consulate at Ventimiglia on 3 November 1926, three days after an attempt on Mussolini's life in Bologna. On 31 October 1926 a revolver shot was fired at Mussolini as he drove through the city. In the same moment fascists killed Anteo Zamboni, a boy of fifteen years and ten months from a family of anarchists, on the spot, and he was blamed for the attack. The fascist government used the Bologna case as a pretext for new repressive measures. On 9 November 1926 it declared 120 opposition deputies stripped of their parliamentary mandates, and the emergency powers it introduced that day led to the arrest of anti-fascists including Antonio Gramsci. The excerpt gives no reason for the frontier agitation, and its headline's "de nouveau" ("again") points to earlier incidents. The excerpt alone therefore does not show that the Bologna attempt caused the trouble at Ventimiglia. Still, it places the episode in the weeks when the regime was moving to crush all open opposition.
The Socialists after the break-up of the Cartel des gauches
The deputy's worry about complete lists in every department makes sense against the alliance the Socialists had just left. In the 1924 elections the SFIO and the Radical-Socialists formed the Cartel des gauches. The Cartel won a majority of seats, 327 against 254, thanks to a favourable voting system rather than a majority of the vote. That majority broke up in 1926, and the SFIO went into opposition. Raymond Poincaré, in power since July 1926, then formed a government of the National Bloc parties plus the Radical-Socialists. So by November 1926 the Radicals, presumably the "friends on the left" the deputy mentions, sat in a cabinet with the right. In his account, the Socialist congress had chosen to field its own complete lists everywhere. He feared that splitting the left's vote in this way would elect right-wing candidates at the expense of both Socialists and Radicals. The column presents this as one unnamed deputy's private view, not as the party's own assessment.
How the 1928 election was eventually fought
The danger the deputy described belonged to the electoral rules in force in 1926, and those rules did not survive to the next general election. The 1928 legislative elections restored the two-round system that had been abolished in 1919, so the contest was fought under different rules from the ones the Socialist congress was planning for. As in earlier elections, the Radical-Socialists stood with the left. Even so, the right won, with 329 deputies against 258 for the left, and the result was a victory for Poincaré's centre-right government. The 1928 outcome therefore cannot be read as a direct test of the full-list decision the deputy criticised. It does show, however, that the left came out of the period of the Cartel's collapse in the minority.
What became of Marie Lefebvre's death sentence
The headline promised that the "harpy" would atone, but the sentence reported from Douai was never carried out. On 26 August 1925 Marie Lefebvre had taken advantage of a car outing with her son and daughter-in-law to shoot the young woman. She was tried at the Douai assizes in October 1926. During the trial she showed no remorse, and the forensic medical experts judged her responsible for her actions. She was sentenced to death, but in December 1926 a presidential pardon commuted the sentence to life imprisonment. She was soon transferred to the women's prison at Haguenau and remained there until her death, which was announced in Lille on 16 May 1934. The dispatch calls her the wife of "a very rich industrialist"; the encyclopedia entry identifies her husband as Guillaume Lefebvre, a brewer she had married in 1888.
Why the Lefebvre case drew such attention
The hostile outbursts from the courtroom audience that the dispatch describes reflected a wider public mood. Marie Lefebvre provoked a unanimous feeling of antipathy in public opinion, and people began to ask what kind of person she was. The press covered the affair extensively, and Le Figaro in particular opened its columns to many experts. The case also caught the interest of the psychoanalyst Princess Marie Bonaparte. On 14 January 1927, a few weeks after the sentence was commuted, she visited Lefebvre in prison and questioned her for more than four hours. In the article she published in the Revue française de psychanalyse in 1927, Bonaparte interpreted the murder as an expression of the Jocasta complex. The newspaper's label "mégère" ("harpy") and Bonaparte's study came out of the same burst of attention, but they explained the murderer in very different ways.
Original
De graves incidents se produisent de nouveau sur la frontière du S. E.
Déçu, un officier fasciste arracha alors des lèvres d'un mécanicien la cigarette qu'il fumait déclarant que l ' «on ne fumait pas en présence d'un fasciste». Cependant la police de Vintimille avait été alertée. Le commissaire envoya la milice garder le Consulat Français et fit dégager les abords de la gare où les fascistes menaçaient de saboter le départ des trains français. Quelqu'un ayant crié «au danger, vu la police», les «chemises noires» se dirigèrent vers le Consuiat brandissant fusils et bâtons. La police avait organisé un barrage mais un fasciste, déjouant la surveillance, pénétra dans le Consulat et du haut d'un balcon harangua ses camarades. Il fut arrêté.
Quelques instants avec... aux Pas-Perdus
Passe un député socialiste: «Nous attendons notre nouvel organe; certes, on lira le camarade Blum avec satisfaction. Le citoyen Louquet aura des pratiques, M. Renaudel pourrait bien n'avoir comme lecteurs que ceux qui sont atteints d'insomnies chroniques. - «Vous avez pourtant fait du bon travail au Congrès? - Si l'on veut... Il est évident qu'aucune fissure n'est apperue dans le parti. Toutefois certaines décisions m'ont paru assez malheureuses, le fait de présenter une liste complète dans chaque département constitue peut-être un danger, car sans le vouloir, et en cherchant à obtenir l'effet contraire, nous favoriserons les candidats de droite au détriment de nous-mêmes et de nos amis de la gauche.
La mégère expiera
DOUAI, 2 novembre. - Mme Marie Lefebvre, cette femme d'un très riche industriel, qui avait assassiné d'un coup de revolver sa bru enceinte dans l'automobile que conduisait son fils, a été condamnée à mort. L'horrible mégère n'a montré aucun regret de son acte. Son attitude au cours des débats a soulevé à plusieurs reprises des manifestations hostiles de l'auditoire.