Aube the police pursued a girl because she had murdered two children, whom
she ought to have taken to the foundling hospital, in order to keep the
little money given to the children. At last the police found the girl on
the road to Paris, near Romilly, drowned, and her own father gave himself
up as her murderer. Finally, let me mention a couple of cases which have
occurred recently, and have therefore only the newspapers as their
vouchers. In October 1836 a Count Belecznai was condemned to death in
Hungary because he had murdered an official and severely wounded his own
relations. His elder brother was executed earlier as a patricide, and his
father also had been a murderer (_Frankfurter Postzeitung_ of the 26th
October 1836). A year later the youngest brother of this Count, in the
same street where the latter had murdered the official, fired a pistol at
the steward of his estates, but missed him (_Frankfurter Journal_, 16th
September 1837). In the _Frankfurter Postzeitung_ of the 19th November
1857 a correspondent in Paris announces the condemnation to death of a
very dangerous highway robber, Lemaire, and his companions, and adds: “The
criminal tendency seems hereditary in his family and in those of his
confederates, as several of their race have died on the scaffold.” It
follows from a passage in the Laws of Plato that similar cases were
already known in Greece (_Stob. Flor._, vol. ii. p. 213). The annals of
crime will certainly have many similar pedigrees to show. The tendency to
suicide is specially hereditary.
On the other hand, when we see the excellent Marcus Aurelius have the
wicked Commodus for a son, this does not not lead us astray; for we know
that the _Diva Faustina_ was a _uxor infamis_. On the contrary, we mark
this case in order in analogous cases to presume an analogous reason; for
example, that Domitian was the full brother of Titus I can never believe,
but that Vespasian also was a deceived husband.