Marie-Fortunée Lafarge (née Capelle; 15 January 1816 – 7 November 1852) was a French woman who was convicted of murdering her husband by arsenic poisoning in 1840. Her case became notable because it was one of the early trials to be followed by the public through daily newspaper reports, and because she was the first person convicted largely on direct forensic toxicological evidence. Nonetheless, questions about Lafarge's guilt divided French society to the extent that it is often compared to the better-known Dreyfus affair. Early life Marie Lafarge was born in Paris in 1816, the daughter of an artillery officer. She is said to descend through her grandmother, Hermine, Baroness Collard, from a liaison between Stéphanie Félicité, comtesse de Genlis and Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans. Marie lost her father to a hunting accident when she was age 12; her mother, who remarried soon after, died seven years later. At age 18, Marie was adopted by her maternal aunt, who was married to the secretary-general of the Bank of France. The two women did not get along. Despite that her foster parents treated her well and sent her to the best schools, Marie was kept aware of her status as a poor relative. Because she attended an elite school, Marie interacted with daughters of the moneyed aristocracy. She used every means to persuade them that she too came from a wealthy family and became envious when she saw her friends marrying rich noblemen. Marie had little say in the matter of matrimony. Her marriage dowry of 90,000 francs, while considerable, was not impressive considering her family's status, and Marie was left with feelings of inadequacy that fueled her pride and ambition. As Marie remained unmarried when she turned 23, one of her uncles took responsibility for finding her a husband. Unknown to Marie, he engaged the services of a marriage broker. This transaction produced just one candidate who fit the advice of her father that "no marriage contract should be made with a man whose only income is his salary as a subprefect." Charles Lafarge Charles Pouch-Lafarge was a big, coarse man, aged 28. He was the son of Jean-Baptiste Lafarge, justice of the peace in Vigeois. In 1817, Charles's father bought the former charterhouse, or Carthusian monastery, in the hamlet of Le Glandier, Corrèze, which had been run by Carthusian monks since the 13th century but fallen into