SANS SOUCI

Here is another legend told by Marie Caroline Watson Hamlin in Legends of le Détroit:

SANS SOUCI

At the beginning of the 19th century, Gabriel Godefroy was an agent for the Pottawatomies and the Chippewas, two of the First Nations who lived in the Detroit River area. He had many contacts with all members of the Detroit River community — French, English, Native, American and Canadian — and people often gathered at his house, as much to do business as to have a good time. It is said that the wine and the cider flowed freely at these affairs.

Sans Souci, Brett Jubinville. Little man with the mare Sans Souci.

In Gabriel Godefroy’s stable, behind the house, lived his clerk, a mysterious old bachelor named Jean Beaucgrand. People were very wary of him. He had an old mare called Sans Souci. People hated Sans Souci. She spent her days eating fruits and vegetables from the habitant’s gardens. People said there wasn’t a fence she couldn’t jump. Someone even claimed to have seen her jump over the fort’s palissade — a wall twelve feet high ! The more Sans Souci ate, the thinner she got, until she was nothing more than a skeleton with skin. People would chase her off with sticks. She would sometimes spend hours watching people in the streets of Detroit. Some thought she was laughing at them. They swore she could understand people’s conversations. But Sans Souci got along very well with Jean Beaugrand, who lived in the stable with her.

One night, while a group of businessmen were gathered at Gabriel Godefroy’s house, someone was sent to get the wine cellar key from Jean Beaugrand. The man came back without the key, but with the astounding news that he had seen Jean Beaugrand and Sans Souci sitting at the table together, laughing and talking! The crowd rushed out to observe this phenomenon. Climbing up a ladder, one of them confirmed the story: he could see the strange couple playing cards and quaffing big glasses of cider. Gabriel Godefroy kicked the door in, but too late: Sans Souci had escaped through the window and was back in her stall downstairs. Naturally, Jean Beaugrand denied the whole thing.

A few weeks later, the stable — and in fact the entire town — burned to the ground in the great Detroit fire of 1805. Sans Souci was never seen again. Some claim to have seen the Devil carry her away through the flames; others said it was the Red Dwarf — le Nain Rouge — who came to get her. The Americans built a new town; the old mare was gone with old French Detroit.