![]() They amused themselves with this little game for some time more. In fact, having withdrawn to the vestibule of the house, he succeeded in identifying everyone who touched the lines. Then he invited his spectators to touch the black lines, stating that he would name all those who did so without seeing them. Therefore he had the candles lit again and drew three black lines on the mantel of the fireplace, using the edge of the cross and a piece of charcoal. But he did not admit that he was completely vanquished and wanted to prove to his spectators that he was indeed a diviner. After an hour of “divinations and prognostications” he had to admit that he was incapable of identifying the thief. It seems clear that the dread which the sorcerer created among his spectators was not sufficient to lead the thief to reveal himself. This new ceremony was just as ineffectual. Nothing happened, and Havard de Beaufort ordered the fire in the fireplace to be uncovered and threw into it, one after the other, the three small packages of powder he had just prepared, each time taking care first to read a verse from the Gospel. At that instant the thief’s face was supposed to appear in the mirror. He had the candles extinguished and the fire covered up in the fireplace, seized the moment when the room was plunged into darkness to pick up the mirror, and, holding the crucifix, muttered some Latin prayers. When this rite was ended he prepared three slips of paper into which he poured a little gunpowder. On the powder he placed the crucifix that René-Charles Laigu, dit Lanoue, had brought him, poured on each end a mixture of olive oil, gunpowder, and powdered rosin called “viper oil,” and without losing any time dried the oil up with the candle flames. The “sorcerer” held a book of prayers, the Verba Jesu Christi ex Evangeliis, in his hands and read aloud some verses, spreading pinches of powder on the back of the mirror after each verse. He turned the mirror upside-down on the table and placed it between the two lighted candles. He set on a table near the fireplace a white tablecloth, a little bottle of olive oil, three packages – one white, one yellow, one black – of gunpowder and powdered rosin, two candles, and a mirror. Havard de Beaufort first tried to create an atmosphere that would impress his spectators. The seance of catoptromancy was held that same evening in Robidoux’s home in the presence of a dozen persons, all of them relatives, neighbours, or friends of the shoemaker. ![]() Prepared to go to any lengths to get his money back, Robidoux agreed to the bargain and immediately paid Havard de Beaufort six livres. Havard de Beaufort then made an offer to the shoemaker, for the sum of 20 livres, to conjure up the thief’s face in a mirror. On 28 June 1742, when stationed at Montreal, he learned that the shoemaker Charles Robidoux, from the suburb of Saint-Joseph, had been robbed of 300 livres and that the search for the guilty person had been vain. Despite this lack of success Havard de Beaufort tried his skill again five years later. He was not able, however, to identify the robber. ![]() In 1737 Havard de Beaufort tried “by some craftiness and card tricks” to discover the thief of a “valuable ring” which the wife of Jacques Testard* de Montigny, Marie de La Porte de Louvigny, had lost. The judicial annals of New France relate certain facts concerning Havard de Beaufort that merit some description because they throw light in several respects on the social history of Canada during the French régime. 1715 in Paris returned to France in the autumn of 1742, date and circumstances of death unknown.įrançois-Charles Havard de Beaufort was known in the Montreal region as a public entertainer and “sorcerer.” But, having an ingenious mind and a superior education for the period, he tried, as he himself admitted, to make use of his card and knife tricks not only to divert and amuse spectators but also to “intimidate ordinary people in serious matters.” HAVARD DE BEAUFORT, FRANÇOIS-CHARLES, known as L’Avocat, soldier, “sorcerer” b. ![]()
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