Curious chance came to the rescue of Monsieur de la Reynie; but to the undoing and judicial murder of an innocent man, one Jean Larcher, ending up with a horrible tragedy. This Jean Larcher, who had sustained a loss of some 5000 livres, which had been stolen from his house, came to the lieutenant of police to lodge his complaint, in the hope that the thief might be traced. No sooner had he given his name, than Monsieur de la Reynie summoned a police officer, and whispering a few words in his ear, bade him accompany Larcher, who was a bookbinder, to his house in the rue des Lions St Paul. Larcher, delighted at the prompt and interested attention shown him, grew communicative as he went along, and gave the officer much information as to the exact position of the receptacles in which he stored his money and stock in trade. On arriving, the officer, changing his courteous demeanour, called to two of the small throng of soldiers and police standing about in front of the bookbinder’s door, and bidding them keep him well in their charge, and follow him upstairs in company with another officer, went first to a room on the first floor, where he told the man to climb to the top of a certain cupboard, loaded with papers and pamphlets ready for the binder, and bring them down. Selecting one of these, the officer placed it in the hands of Larcher, who turned white as a sheet, for it was a copy of _The Ghost of M. Scarron_. The unfortunate man, without more ado, was hurried off under arrest to the Châtelet, and thence, before any great loss of time, to the torture-chamber, three times suffering there, and finally to the gibbet, where he died bravely, and firmly asserting his innocence to the last. There came a time when he was justified. The whole matter proved to be an infamous plot, concocted by a scoundrel who had an intrigue with Larcher’s wife. This man was Larcher’s assistant, and afterwards married the widow. At a later time Larcher’s son discovered that the wretched fellow had placed the pamphlets where they were come upon in Larcher’s house, and then had written an anonymous letter to Monsieur de la Reynie, informing him of where they were to be found. On tracking the exact truth and circumstances of this abominable treachery, the young man broke, in the dead of night, into the house where the couple lived, and murdered both. He was arrested; but he was saved from public death by brain-fever, which struck him down while he was in prison. At the time of the conviction of Larcher, it was more than believed that he was innocent; but, in the first place, M. de la Reynie had his own safety and position to consider, and somebody had to bear the brunt; and secondly, riding very hard on the heels of it, Larcher was a Protestant, and furthermore guilty of the enormity of remaining in communication with his child, who had been sent for protection to England.