It turned out that Blanche had found a suitor all those years ago; unfortunately, he was not the young, rich aristocrat her family had hoped she would wed, but rather an older, poor lawyer. Although her mother insisted she choose a more suitable husband, Blanche refused. In retaliation, Madame Monnier locked her daughter in a padlocked room until she ceded to her will. The years came and went, but Blanche Monnier refused to give in. Even after her beau died she was kept locked in her cell, with only rats and lice for company. Over the course of twenty-five years, neither her brother nor any of the family servants lifted a finger to help her; they would later claim they were too terrified of the mistress of the house to risk it. It was never revealed who wrote the note that triggered Blanche’s rescue: one rumor suggests a servant let the family secret slip to her boyfriend, who was so horrified he went straight to the attorney general. Public outrage was so great that an angry mob formed outside of the Monnier house, leading Madame Monnier to suffer a heart attack. She would die 15 days after her daughter’s liberation. The story bears some similarities to the much more recent case of Elisabeth Fritzl, who also spent 25 years imprisoned in her own home. Blanche Monnier suffered some lasting psychological damage after her decades-long imprisonment: she lived out the rest of her days in a French sanitarium, dying in 1913.
