The Vampire of Ropraz Read Online Free Page B
Author: Jacques Chessex
of so many terrible crimes?
Charles-Augustin Favez was born in Syens, a tiny village between Moudon and Mézières, on the 2nd of November 1882, in a deprived environment in which drink, incest and illiteracy were family scourges. At the age of three Charles-Augustin was taken from his wretched family and given to a couple who abused him, before being finally placed by the welfare services in a family of shopkeepers in Mézières, who tried to give him a decent upbringing by having him do odd jobs around the shop, while at the same time he was attending school.
Charles-Augustin was a very sturdy lad, physically developed beyond his age and subject to dreadful fits of anger. He spent little time with his schoolmates, avoided girls and spoke so little that you might have thought he was dumb. Making his annual health examination in the Mézières schools in June 1892, when Charles-Augustin was ten, Dr Delay noted in his report that the Favez boy was over-developed for his age, extremely
pale, with raw, red-rimmed eyes seeming “as if the daylight causes him pain”. This remark would be cited in court.
Charles-Augustin Favez is subject to “absences” that obliterate from his memory certain facts or actions to which he has been subjected or that he may have committed. He seems to have cultivated these absences as a defence against serious hurt done to him in childhood, such as the hunger and ill treatment to which he was subjected before being placed with the Chappuis. In the matters of interest to us, he says he had no recollection of any of the recent perverse acts he has committed, or may have committed, in any of the graveyards mentioned.
It is discovered that ever since he was fifteen he has had a liking for drink that makes him imbibe whatever strong stuff he can get his hands on, especially on Saturdays, when he was seen in cafés and at dances, even when he was still under age, or at travelling fairs and other festivities, where he got drunk. On many occasions he has been picked up after closing time and dumped at the
door of the Chappuis’ shop on the Grand Rue, where people find such a spectacle alarming.
At sixteen he was expelled from catechism class for stealing fifty centimes from a fellow pupil’s smock in the presbytery vestry. An interesting coincidence: at school and in catechism class one of his fellow pupils was Rosa Gilliéron, from whom, intimidated, he kept his distance, though the master’s report says that “he watched her continuously and followed her in the street, even when her father was present”.
There was just one year’s difference between Charles-Augustin Favez and Rosa Gilliéron, born in 1882 and 1883 respectively. They had the “same” schooling in a district where public education was obligatory for all. It is strange to imagine the pure young girl innocently following the teacher’s lesson from the front row, while from the back of the class Favez the Vampire is watching her and already imagining he is drawing her blood and feeding on her.
9
So Favez is locked up in Oron prison. He is not held for long: only fifty-seven days. How is it possible for the most notorious criminal in all Switzerland to escape punishment in this way?
In Oron, contrary to every expectation, Charles-Augustin Favez will benefit from the interventions of two individuals. The first is inevitable: it is by a psychiatrist already famous at the time. Dr Albert Mahaim, a student of the theories of Charcot, who had attended his lectures at the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, has himself carried out a considerable amount of research on hysteria, sadism and neurasthenia, and senses in Favez an excellent subject for observation, and possibly
for corroboration, useful to the development of his own theories. A professor in the Lausanne Medical Faculty, Albert Mahaim is also one of the founders of the Cery psychiatric institution, to the west of the town, on the wooded fringe of the community of
Charles-Augustin Favez was born in Syens, a tiny village between Moudon and Mézières, on the 2nd of November 1882, in a deprived environment in which drink, incest and illiteracy were family scourges. At the age of three Charles-Augustin was taken from his wretched family and given to a couple who abused him, before being finally placed by the welfare services in a family of shopkeepers in Mézières, who tried to give him a decent upbringing by having him do odd jobs around the shop, while at the same time he was attending school.
Charles-Augustin was a very sturdy lad, physically developed beyond his age and subject to dreadful fits of anger. He spent little time with his schoolmates, avoided girls and spoke so little that you might have thought he was dumb. Making his annual health examination in the Mézières schools in June 1892, when Charles-Augustin was ten, Dr Delay noted in his report that the Favez boy was over-developed for his age, extremely
pale, with raw, red-rimmed eyes seeming “as if the daylight causes him pain”. This remark would be cited in court.
Charles-Augustin Favez is subject to “absences” that obliterate from his memory certain facts or actions to which he has been subjected or that he may have committed. He seems to have cultivated these absences as a defence against serious hurt done to him in childhood, such as the hunger and ill treatment to which he was subjected before being placed with the Chappuis. In the matters of interest to us, he says he had no recollection of any of the recent perverse acts he has committed, or may have committed, in any of the graveyards mentioned.
It is discovered that ever since he was fifteen he has had a liking for drink that makes him imbibe whatever strong stuff he can get his hands on, especially on Saturdays, when he was seen in cafés and at dances, even when he was still under age, or at travelling fairs and other festivities, where he got drunk. On many occasions he has been picked up after closing time and dumped at the
door of the Chappuis’ shop on the Grand Rue, where people find such a spectacle alarming.
At sixteen he was expelled from catechism class for stealing fifty centimes from a fellow pupil’s smock in the presbytery vestry. An interesting coincidence: at school and in catechism class one of his fellow pupils was Rosa Gilliéron, from whom, intimidated, he kept his distance, though the master’s report says that “he watched her continuously and followed her in the street, even when her father was present”.
There was just one year’s difference between Charles-Augustin Favez and Rosa Gilliéron, born in 1882 and 1883 respectively. They had the “same” schooling in a district where public education was obligatory for all. It is strange to imagine the pure young girl innocently following the teacher’s lesson from the front row, while from the back of the class Favez the Vampire is watching her and already imagining he is drawing her blood and feeding on her.
9
So Favez is locked up in Oron prison. He is not held for long: only fifty-seven days. How is it possible for the most notorious criminal in all Switzerland to escape punishment in this way?
In Oron, contrary to every expectation, Charles-Augustin Favez will benefit from the interventions of two individuals. The first is inevitable: it is by a psychiatrist already famous at the time. Dr Albert Mahaim, a student of the theories of Charcot, who had attended his lectures at the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, has himself carried out a considerable amount of research on hysteria, sadism and neurasthenia, and senses in Favez an excellent subject for observation, and possibly
for corroboration, useful to the development of his own theories. A professor in the Lausanne Medical Faculty, Albert Mahaim is also one of the founders of the Cery psychiatric institution, to the west of the town, on the wooded fringe of the community of
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