Collective fear during the murders

The collective fear during the murders in Grasse describes the escalating panic, terror, and societal breakdown that gripped the town of Grasse during the year-long spree of the murderer of young virgins, a state that culminated in mass hysteria, religious supplication, and occult practices before being abruptly transformed into adoration at Grenouille's execution.

Origins and Escalation of Terror

The fear began in May of the year when the naked body of a fifteen-year-old girl was found in a rose field between Grasse and Opio, killed by a heavy blow to the back of the head, her hair cut off and taken. The murderer's method—striking only ripening but virginal girls, leaving them untouched sexually but shorn—created a unique horror. As the summer progressed, the murders continued at a rate of nearly one per week, with victims including the daughters of a Genoese day-laborer, a Sardinian washerwoman, and a carpenter's daughter killed in her own locked room on the fifth floor without a sound. The killer seemed impalpable, incorporeal, like a ghost; dogs did not bark at his approach. The fear spread over the countryside, and people no longer knew against whom to direct their impotent rage. The police lieutenant was removed from office. The town council, composed of the richest and most influential commoners and nobles, condescended to write an abject petition begging the bishop to curse the monster. At the end of September, after twenty-four victims, the slayer was made anathema and excommunicated from all the pulpits of the city, including a ban spoken by the bishop himself from the pulpit of Notre-Dame-du-Puy.

Societal Paralysis and Occult Responses

When the murders ceased after the bishop's anathema and then resumed with the killing of Laure Richis, the fear returned more virulently than before. People stayed in their houses at night, locked up their daughters, barricaded themselves in, mistrusted one another, and slept no more. The dread was more paralysing than six months earlier, for people felt helpless at the sudden return of a danger they had thought well behind them. If even Antoine Richis, the richest man in town and second consul, could not protect his child, and if the murderer's hand was not deterred even by the hallowed beauty of Laure, there seemed no hope of escape. Many simpler souls knew no better course than to go to church and pray, taking their wives and daughters with them, eating and sleeping in the church, convinced that the only possible refuge was under the protection of the despairing parish and the gaze of the Madonna. Other, quicker wits banded together in occult groups, hiring a certified witch from Gourdon and celebrating black masses in limestone grottoes to curry the devil's favor. Members of the upper middle class and educated nobility put their money on modern scientific methods, magnetizing their houses, hypnotizing their daughters, and employing telepathy to drive off the murderer's spirit. The guilds organized a penitential procession from Grasse to La Napoule and back. Monks established services of perpetual prayer and ceaseless chants, so that unbroken lamentation was heard day and night. Hardly anyone worked. With feverish passivity, the people of Grasse awaited the murderer's next blow, secretly yearning to hear the horrible news, if only in the hope that it would not be about them.

The Execution and Its Miraculous Reversal

On the day of Grenouille's scheduled execution, the parade grounds before the city gates were packed with over ten thousand people, more than for the crowning of the Queen of the Jasmine. The scaffold had been built, an iron rod forged, and the executioner had practiced blows on carcasses. The citizens readied themselves as for a high holiday, donning their finest clothes and official garb. But when Grenouille stepped out of the carriage in a blue frock coat, wearing the perfume he had created from the auras of twenty-five virgins, a miracle occurred. From one moment to the next, the ten thousand people felt themselves infused with the unshakeable belief that this man could not possibly be a murderer. He was innocence personified. The executioner's hands trembled; he could not lift the rod. The crowd was overcome with a powerful sense of goodwill, tenderness, and love for the little homicidal man. The scheduled execution degenerated into the largest orgy the world had seen since the second century before Christ, with respectable women ripping open their blouses, men copulating in impossible combinations, and the air heavy with the sweet odour of sweating lust. Antoine Richis, the father of the last victim, ran to Grenouille and embraced him, calling him "my son" and begging forgiveness. The collective fear had been transformed into collective adoration.

Aftermath and Erasure

The people of Grasse awoke with a terrible hangover, wretchedly sick at heart. Many literally erased the experience from their memories. The town council resolved to dismantle the scaffold and restore the fields. The judges agreed to close the case of Grenouille and open new proceedings against an unidentified murderer. Dominique Druot was arrested, tortured, and executed in Grenouille's place. The town forgot the events so totally that travellers who inquired about the infamous murderer found not a single sane person who could give them information. Life returned completely to normal; people worked hard and slept well. The collective fear had been so thoroughly suppressed that it left no trace in public memory, replaced by a conspiracy of silence born of universal guilt.