Everyone loves a bargain, a bit of financial good fortune to the buyer’s advantage. When it’s exceptionally good, we call it the deal of a lifetime.
Sixty years ago, a lawyer made an arrangement that he thought would quickly reap a highly profitable windfall. But as so often happens in Holy Cow! History tales, it didn’t turn out that way.
Our story begins in February 1875, when Nicolas and Marguerite Gilles welcomed daughter Jeanne into their well-to-do family in Arles in southern France.
For historical context, the United States was only 99 years old at the time; the telephone and electric light bulb hadn’t been invented yet; and the Statue of Liberty was still a decade away from delivery.
Nicolas was a shipbuilder, and the family lived in a coastal city on the Mediterranean. Jeanne attended private schools, painted, and played the piano. Her doting daddy brought her home for lunch each day. It was a happy, secure family environment.
In 1896, when she was 21, Jeanne married Ferdinand Calment, her double second cousin (they were related on both sides of their families) and heir to a prosperous drapery business. The young couple lived in a sumptuous apartment and had servants. Jeanne cycled, swam, played tennis, and even fenced. In January 1898, their only child, daughter Yvonne, arrived. Life was good.
Yvonne grew up, married, and had a son of her own. When she died of pleurisy on her 36th birthday, Jeanne raised her son.
The family survived World War I, the worldwide Great Depression, and even German occupation during World War II. In 1942, her husband (who was by then 73) died, reportedly of cherry poisoning.
Throughout all that time, Jeanne continued living in the same home. Grandson Frederic lived next and looked after her. She eased into a comfortable old age.
A fellow resident of Arles had been eyeing her beloved apartment for a long time. Andre-Francois Raffray was a real estate attorney, and he knew a good thing when he saw one. The apartment was in an excellent location and was worth a great deal of money.
So in 1965, when he was 47 and Jeanne was 90, he made an offer. He proposed an arrangement that the French call a viager contract. Raffray would pay Jeanne 2,500 francs every month (about $500 at the time); when she died, he would inherit her apartment at 2, Rue du Palais.
Raffray must have thought, “I just made the deal of the century! She’s 90 years old; she’ll die soon, and I’ll get the apartment for a pittance!”
And his scheme might have worked, too—if Jeanne Calment hadn’t been the Energizer Bunny of geriatrics. She kept going and going…
Months turned into years, and years stretched into decades. And still the payment was made each month.
By the time Raffray died in 1995 at age 77, Jeanne was 120 years old. (And Raffray’s widow was legally obligated to keep those monthly checks coming, too.)
Jeanne died two years later in 1997. Not only was she what experts call a supercentenarian, but at age 122 years and 164 days, she was the oldest person ever whose age could be documented.
Raffray not only picked the wrong little old lady for his offer … but he also chose the person who lived the longest in all recorded human history!
The arrangement came back to bite him on the bottom, too. Because Raffray wound up paying more than twice the apartment’s value over those 32 years. Some deal!
O. Henry and Rod Serling never wrote a better twist ending than that.
