Conciergerie of the Palace at Paris, who have appealed from the
sentence given at the aforesaid trial, the thirtieth day of April 1777,
by which the aforesaid Antoine-Francois Derues has been declared duly
attainted and convicted of attempting unlawfully to appropriate without
payment, the estate of Buissony Souef, belonging to the Sieur and Dame
de Saint Faust de Lamotte, from whom he had bought the said estate by
private contract on the twenty-second day of December 1775, and also
of having unworthily abused the hospitality shown by him since the
sixteenth day of December last towards the aforesaid Dame de Lamotte,
who arrived in Paris on the aforesaid day in order to conclude with him
the bargain agreed on in December 1775, and who, for this purpose, and
at his request, lodged with her son in the house of the said Derues, who
of premeditated design poisoned the said Dame de Lamotte, whether by a
medicine composed and prepared by him on the thirtieth day of January
last, or by the beverages and drinks administered by him after the
aforesaid medicine (he having taken the precaution to send his servant
into the country for two or three days), and to keep away strangers from
the room where the said Dame de Lamotte was lying), from the effects
of which poison the said Dame de Lamotte died on the night of the said
thirty-first day of January last; also of having kept her demise secret,
and of having himself enclosed in a chest the body of the said Dame de
Lamotte, which he then caused to be secretly transported to a cellar
in the rue de la Mortellerie hired by him for this purpose, under the
assumed name of Ducoudray, wherein he buried it himself, or caused it to
be buried; also of having persuaded the son of the above Dame de Lamotte
(who, with his mother, had lodged in his house from the time of their
arrival in Paris until the fifteenth day of January, last,--and who had
then been placed in a school that the aforesaid Dame de Lamotte was at
Versailles and desired him to join her there, and, under this pretence,
of having conducted the said younger Sieur de Lamotte, the twelfth day
of February (after having given him some chocolate), to the aforesaid
town of Versailles, to a lodging hired at a cooper's, and of having
there wilfully poisoned him, either in the chocolate taken by the
said younger Sieur de Lamotte before starting, or in beverages
and medicaments which the said Derues himself prepared, mixed, and
administered