Noble Blood - The Devil and the Duchess de Praslin

Episode Date: December 22, 2020

The Duke and Duchess de Praslin were originally a love match. But two decades—and a beautiful, young governess—led to growing tensions and resentment. When the Duchess was found murdered in her bedchamber, the police had no choice but to arrest her powerful husband. (Unrelated: Noble Blood merch is here! https://store.dftba.com/collections/noble-blood) Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. What's up, everyone? I'm Ago Vodam. My next guest, it's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. He goes, just give it a shot.

But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, The cat just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck.

Listen to thanks, Dad, on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, and happy holidays. Before we get started with this episode, I just wanted to give a quick shout out to remind you that Noble Blood officially has merch. The link to the merch store will be in the description of the episode. And I also want to give a special shout out. I'm trying something new and hopefully exciting. a pamphlet club where if you subscribe, I send an annotated script from one of my favorite Noble Blood episodes with brand new context and information along once a month.

But the thing with this club is if you want to get in, you got to sign up now. Once it starts, you can't get in. You can always get out, but you can't get back in. That sounds like the Hotel California. Again, happy holidays. And thank you so much to all of the support for Noble Blood. I hope you all stay safe and healthy and keep your heads literally and metaphor. Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of IHeart Radio and Grimmin-Mild from Aaron Manky.

Listener discretion is advised. From the outside, Henriette de Lisey de Portfield had a lovely life. She and her husband, the minister, Henry Field, were prominent figures in the High Society of 19th Century, New York and Massachusetts. Henriette had emigrated from France before coming to America and working as the principal, of a female art school. Her husband Henry was nine years her junior, and by all accounts, they were wildly in love. They were fixtures at parties and literary suarez. Henriette became personal friends with Harriet Beecher Stowe. The fields were neighbors with Nathaniel Hawthorne. One evening, the fields were attending a party at the Century Club in New York, when Henriette

heard someone hissing at her from across the room. murderess, the voice said, murderess. It was an old man from the continent, Count Goreski, squinting at Henriette and hissing at her through his loose, false teeth. Murderous, he called, she's a murderess. It was a small scandal. The elderly man was escorted out of the club with murmurs of apology to Mr. and Mrs. Field. The party continued, but with a strain. tension in the air, the polite smiles of things not said. Most people in New York didn't know the

rumors attached to Henriette Duluzi de Portfield, the woman once known in France as Madame Duluzi, but Count Gorski did. There was a generation of nobles in Europe who hadn't forgotten what had happened to the beautiful Duchess de Prelin, the only daughter of a noble family. Count Gorski hadn't forgotten the gruesome tragedy that befell her. And there were people that believed that Henriette DeLuzzi, the woman who once worked as a governess of the Duchess's children, got away with murder. I'm Dana Schwartz, and this is Noble Blood.

The Duchess was having nightmares. She had been having nightmares for months, the same one every night, that the devil wearing a red brocade suit was appearing to her in her bedchamber. By the time she woke up, he was gone. She told the servants about it and her friends. Everyone looked at her with sympathy. You're going through a challenging time, they reminded her.

It's stress and worry. Things will get better soon. Recurring nightmares aside, most people envied the Duchess, known to her friends as Fannie. She was the only daughter of a famous French general and politician, Horaceabiani. Fanny's mother had died in childbirth, but she was doted on by the rest of her family. She was their beautiful shining jewel, a bona fide heiress, niece of the Duke of Colignier, and destined for a prominent place in French social circles. When Fanny was 17 in 1824, she married the dashing Charles Theobald, who went on to become a Chevalier.

Gé d'E d'Hé deignor and then a pierre of France. He was from an important family related directly to the reigning king in France, Louis-Philippe. But even more important than that to Fanny was that it was a love match. He was only two years older than her when they got married, and the pair went on to have ten children, although not all of them survived childhood. Fanny adored her husband. She even tolerated them split. their time between her family's beautiful home in Paris and his family's d'anc ancestral de

Proulogne castle, a dreary property in Milan. The pair had been married for over 23 years, but that's when things were changing between them. It started with a governess. While they were staying in Paris, the Duchess hired a new governess for her brood of children. A pretty young woman named Henriette Duluzi. There were no complaints about her service or her performance as a governess. The children absolutely adored her, and they had never been better behaved.

But that was the problem. The children adored Henriette Deluzzi so much that they seemed to prefer her to their own mother. And then there was the Duchess's husband, Charles, the Duke de Praalant. He was becoming distant, kissing the Duchess on the cheek instead of the lips, rarely coming to her bed, ignoring her for most of the day.

The pair lived in the same house like ghosts. The Duchess would hear him making a joke to Henriette from across the house, and then listened to their laughter. She was nearing 40, it was true, and after ten children, her body had changed. But her husband was pulling away from her. Her children were pulling away from her. She didn't know what she could do about it. This is when the nightmare started. Fanny insisted that her husband fire Henriette Deluzzi, who by this point had been working for their family for six years.

The Duke played dumb. Was there a problem with her service? The Duchess looked away. The rumors had become a standard topic of conversation in their social circles. Servants averted their eyes from the Duchess in hallways. Everyone knew that the Duke and Henry were having an affair, including the Duchess. And so the Duchess doubled down. She insisted that Charles fire the governess. Charles gave a miserable little laugh. My dear, he said, if she goes, then so do I. But the humiliation had become too much for the Duchess,

and so she called her husband's bluff. Fine, she replied, will divorce. Scandal be damned. Matches for our daughters will suffer, but I don't care. I'll take my inheritance and my money. I'll take the children. The Duke backed down. All right, he said, I'll fire her.

For now, why don't you and the children go stay at the castle in Maloon, and I'll stay in Paris to fire Henriette and make the appropriate arrangements. Pleased enough, the Duchess agreed and went to the country with the children. But as you might have suspected, while the Duke did dismiss the pretty Henriette de Lizzie, he also rented her a luxurious apartment, and the pair of them, spent a full month together that summer while the Duchess and the children were away. But at the end of that summer, in August 1847, the rest of the family returned to Paris on their way to spend the fall in Diyip. When the Duchess arrived back at their Paris home, she called out, but her husband wasn't there.

Odd. Even Otter, she noticed a few things wrong in her bedchamber. The hinges on her bedroom door were missing. No matter, she would tell the servant about it in the morning. Her husband returned that night before supper, and he reminded Fanny that he had fired Henriette like she had asked, and that everything would be all right from then on. That night was the last time anyone saw the Duchess de Prelant alive. A small warning to younger listeners here,

it's about now that the episode gets a little, well, bloody. On the morning of August 17, 1847, around 5 a.m., strange noises woke two of the servants in the Preelaw house. Emma Leclerc was the Duchess's personal maid. She had served Fanny for over two decades since Fanny was 16 and newly engaged to the Duke, bright-eyed over her exciting future. That morning in August, Emma heard a crash, and the sound. of a struggle, there was an echo of a scream in the air. She and the Duke's valet, who had also woken up, raced to Fannie's bedroom, but they found that the door was locked from the inside.

From the other side of the door, they could hear soft whimpering. The door to the Duchess's bathroom was also locked, as was the door into the Duchess's room from the garden, but the Valet broke a pane of glass and forced his way in, but by the time they got there, the whimpering had stopped. Fanny, the Duchess de Prelin, was dead. The Duchess's bedroom had been designed as a copy of Marie Antoinette's chamber from Versailles, with a four-poster bed on an elevated platform and furnishings in luxurious embroidered silk, but now the entire room was splashed with blood. A giant stain of blood spread across the bed.

The chair was flipped over. Blood trailed all over the room, like the Duchess had been chased or tried to chase her attacker. But whatever had happened, the two servants could see the end result. The Duchess was lying on the floor, her head resting on a couch. She had been stabbed over 30 times. Her skull had been bashed in, and her throat was slashed. Within moments, other servants of the household filed into the room and gasped.

But strangely enough, it was another few minutes after that before the Duke himself appeared, even though his bedroom shared an antechamber with his wife's room. Hadn't he heard anything? Why hadn't he sent out the alarm? The doorway from the Duchess's room to the antechamber was unlocked. Oh my God, the Duke cried when he finally did come into the room. Oh my God in heaven! Some monster has murdered Fanny!

Get a doctor! The valet tried to comfort his master. It had probably been burglars after Fanny's famously valuable jewels. The Duchess had a set of diamonds that had been gifted to her mother by Napoleon and Josephine themselves. Later, however, the police would discover that nothing was taken. It wasn't a robbery. Alas! Alas! My poor father! Fanny, the Duke shouted after his valet politely slipped away to get help.

What monster has done this thing? The Duke threw himself onto the blood-stained bed. Alas, my motherless children! When the policeman arrived, he examined the scene carefully. The room was covered in blood, and it was also covered in strands of the Duchess's hair that seemed to have been ripped out of her head. The Duchess's fingernails were bloody,

like there had been a struggle. The bell she could have used next to her bed to alert her servants had had its rope cut. From underneath the divan, the policeman found a gun, but upon examining it, he found that it hadn't been fired. Instead, the gun was covered in blood and in Fanny's hair. It looked as though it had been used to bash in her head. Sir, do you know who this weapon belongs to? The policeman asked the Duke. I do, the Duke replied.

It's mine. The Duke explained to the policeman that he actually had heard the struggle in his wife's chamber earlier in the morning before even the servants came in. And he, the Duke, had brought the gun to try to fight off his wife's attacker. But by the time he came in, the attacker was already gone. And when he went to hug his wife's dead body, he became covered in blood. So he had returned back to his room to change out of his bloody-collar. clothes so that he wouldn't frighten the children. That's when he came back into the room to find

the servants there. The police didn't exactly buy it. The police searched Charles's room and found the bloody handle of a dagger, although the blade would never be found. They also found a blood-stained bathrobe that someone had tried to wash with soap, a leather sheaths, and an assortment of other items that would be unidentifiable because someone had thrown them into the fire and tried to burn them. The Duke's sink was splattered with blood. The policeman politely asked if the Duke might undergo a physical examination. The Duke hoft and protested. He was a peer of the realm. But eventually he agreed and the police found him covered in scratches and bite marks. The Duke was also limping, and when the policeman asked what had happened to his leg,

that's when the Duke exploded. I have no further explanations to make to you, he said. I am a peer of France, and I do not need to account for myself to police officers. Arresting a Duke would be incredibly controversial and politically dangerous for the policeman, but he had no choice. He sent all of the evidence he had to King Louis. Louis-Philippe, who had to sign off personally on the orders for the Duke to Prolain's arrest, which the king did, reluctantly.

The press and wealthy establishment powers slandered the policeman, but his report was so meticulous that it was difficult to challenge him, especially once they all found Fannie's diaries, which detailed her husband's violent temper and frequent threats. A trial, though, would be a scandal. The Duke was a member of the King's court. A trial would reflect terribly not only on the king himself, but on all of French nobility. But with all of this evidence, there would be no way of avoiding a trial.

But with all of this evidence that the police had, it seemed like there would be no way to avoid a trial. Or was there? Charles, the Duke de Prelant, was put under house arrest and then transferred to the prison at Luxembourg, palace, where they scrambled to put together a jury of peers of the realm who could try such a high-ranking nobleman. Basically, the only people they could get were childhood friends of the Duke. He had to be tried in the court of peers, which was a court exclusively for nobleman,

and pretty much known for its lenient sentencing when it had to convict. But before the trial took place, before any more scandal could be made of the death of the Duchess de Proulogne, the Duke drank a vial of arsenic. The common people, when they heard about his death, were outraged. Had there been no guards watching him? How did he get the poison to begin with? The common theory at the time was that the nobleman imprisoning him had actually given the arsenic to the Duke as a way of, protecting their image, having him die before having to be scandalously found guilty. There was even a rumor that the king himself had sent the Duke the poison, along with a note

saying that he should do the honorable thing. However he got it, after Charles drank the poison, he smashed the bottle and swallowed the shards of broken glass to leave no evidence. He died six days later in excruciating agony. For those six days, the Duke was repeatedly questioned, interrogated, but he continued to maintain his innocence. You know the awful crime of which you are accused, the Lord Chancellor of the Kingdom said at Charles's bedside. You know all of the circumstances which have led to this accusation.

I beg of you, I implore of you, Duke, do not tell a lie. Charles replied, I have not the strength to say anything. It would take a long time for me to tell you the truth and nothing but the truth. What strength? said the Lord Chancellor, clearly frustrated. We want a yes or no. It requires great strength of mind to be able to say yes or no to certain questions. And it is a strength which I do not now possess, the Duke said.

The interrogation continued that. way, with the Duke never confessing for the murder of his wife. The closest the Duke came to remorse was when the Duke said, quote, I wish to say how much I regret I cannot see my children before I die. I implore my family to be kind to them. Henriette Deluzzi, the Prelawn's former governess, was also imprisoned. She was arrested and kept for three months while she was interrogated. But there was no evidence that she had.

anything to do with the murder of the Duchess. And so the charges against her were dismissed. No trial continued against the Duke posthumously. Though his suicide had been an attempt to save face for the peers of the realm, public opinion rose up in a fury against the nobles. Here was a man who faced no justice, they believed, because he was rich and powerful. Nobles would rather have a murderer commit suicide rather than force them to have to condemn a fellow elite.

And that's if the Duke did kill himself. There were also rumors that the Duke managed to get away, that with the help of his powerful friends, he was able to fake his own death and escape to Nicaragua. One historian in Nicaragua alleged that Charles made his way across the Atlantic and lived out the rest of the rest of the, of his life in Madagalpa, marrying another woman, fathering five children, growing out a beard to disguise his appearance, and keeping away from any French frigates containing people that might recognize him. The escape is actually a real possibility. There is even a paper trail. But, a little more likely, if a lot less exciting, a servant probably stole some of the Duke's clothing

and money and papers, so that he could start a new life in Central America. As for Henriette, she escaped the scandal by moving to New York, where she became the principal of a girl school and married a prominent minister. When Henriette died, she was old and beloved by the literary community. Two of her casket-bearers were the poet and journalist William Cullen Bryant and Peter Cooper of Cooper Union. The day of her funeral was marked by the famous diarist George Templeton Strong, who wrote, quote, died Mrs. Henry Field.

I knew her at one time quite well, and she was universally liked. Being uncommonly clever and cultivated, her plainness made it incredible that the Duke de Praella should have been in love with her. A more glowing legacy, or at least a more romantic one, would come later. Henriette's grand niece became a writer named Rachel Field, and she wrote a novel based on her great aunt's life called All This and Heaven Two. It's a romantic story about a governess, falling in love with the Duke in a miserable marriage, who then must kill himself in order to protect his true love

from the other nobles blaming her for the Duchess's murder. It was made into a film starring Betty Davis and Charles Boyer. It really is all about perspective when you try to decide who the heroes are in any given story. That's the story of the murder of the Duchess de Perlant, but stick around after a brief sponsor break to hear a little bit more about the skeletons lurking in the Duke's closet. What's up, everyone? I'm Ego Vodom. My next guest, you know from Stepbrothers Anchorman, Saturday Night Live and The Big Money Players Network. It's Will Ferrell. Woo-woo, woo, woo, woo.

My dad gave me the best advice ever. I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot. I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings. I'm working my way up through, and I know it's a place that come look for up-and-coming talent. He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet. Yeah. He goes, but there's so much luck involved. And he's like, just give it a shot.

He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks Dad on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This is Amy Roboc alongside TJ Holmes from the Amy and TJ podcast. And there is so much news, information, commentary coming at you all day and from all over the place. What's fact, what's fake, and sometimes what the F. So let's cut the crap, okay? Follow the Amy and T.J podcast, a one-stop news and pop culture shop to get you caught up and on with your day. And listen to Amy and T.J. on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you live. listen to podcasts. It was months later that the children of the Duke and Duchess de Prelaw were clearing out their father's rooms at their Paris home when they found a hidden trunk.

It was stuck underneath a few shirts at the back of their father's closet. Inside the trunk was a bright red costume that they had never seen before in a red brocade, the type of costume that someone would wear to a masked ball. It was a Mephistopheles costume, a costume to look like the devil. If rumors are to be believed, the Duke had put the costume on to sneak into his wife's room at night

in the hopes of frightening her into insanity. In the 19th century, an insane wife would have been easy enough to dispose of. without having to resort to murder. Noble Blood is a production of IHeart Radio and Grimmin Mild from Aaron Manky. The show is written and hosted by Dana Schwartz and produced by Aaron Manky, Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, and Trevor Young. Noble Blood is on social media at Noble Blood Tales, and you can learn more about the show over at Noble Blood Tales.com. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, visit the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

What's up, everyone? I'm Ago Vodam. My next guest, it's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. He goes, just give it a shot. But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot in luck. Listen to thanks, Dad, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast.

Guaranteed human.