P.--I have but just been asking the accused, count, whether there was
any ground of enmity between you.
C.C.--(In a steadily declining voice.) I know no other ground except our
lawsuit about a little stream of water.
P.--Has not the accused once threatened to fire at you?
C.C.--Yes; but I did not think he was in earnest, and I never resented
the matter.
P. Do you persist in your declaration?
C.C.--I do. And once more, upon my oath, I declare solemnly that I
recognized, in such a manner as to prevent any possible mistake, M.
Jacques Boiscoran.
It was evidently time that Count Claudieuse should end his evidence. He
begins to totter; his eyes close; his head rolls from side to side; and
two ushers have to come to his assistance to enable him, with the help
of his own servant, to leave the room.
Is the Countess Claudieuse to be called next?
It was thought so; but it was not so. The countess being kept by the
bedside of one of her daughters, who is most dangerously ill, will not
be called at all; and the clerk of the court is ordered to read her
deposition.
Although her description of the terrible event is very graphic,
it contains no new facts, and will remain without influence on the
proceedings.
The next witness is Ribot.
This is a fine handsome countryman, a regular village cock, with a
pink-and-blue cravat around his neck, and a huge gold chain dangling
from his watch-pocket. He seems to be very proud of his appearance and
looks around with an air of the most perfect self-satisfaction.
In the same way he relates his meeting with the accused in a tone of
great importance. He knows every thing and explains every thing. With
a little encouragement he would, no doubt, declare that the accused had
confided to him all his plans of incendiarism and murder. His answers
are almost all received with great hilarity, which bring down upon the
audience another and very severe reprimand from the president.
The witness Gaudry, who succeeds him, is a small, wretched-looking man,
with a false and timid eye, who exhausts himself in bows and scrapes.
Quite different from Ribot, he seems to have forgotten every thing. It
is evident he is afraid of committing himself. He praises the count; but
he does not speak the less well of M. de Boiscoran. He assures the court
of his profound respect for them all,--for the ladies and gentlemen
present, for everybody, in fine.
The woman Courtois, who comes next, evidently wishes she were a thousand
miles away. The president has to make the very greatest efforts to
obtain, word by word, her evidence, which, after all, amounts to next to
nothing.
Then follow two farmers from Brechy, who have been present at the
violent altercation which ended in M. de Boiscoran’s aiming with his gun
at Count Claudieuse.
Their account, interrupted by numberless parentheses, is very obscure.
One of the counsel of the defendant requests them to be more explicit;
and thereupon they become utterly unintelligible. Besides, they
contradict each other. One has looked upon the act of the accused as a
mere jest: the other has looked upon it so seriously as to throw himself
between the two men, in order to prevent M. de Boiscoran from killing
his adversary then and there.
Once more the accused protests, energetically, he never hated Count
Claudieuse: there was no reason why he should hate him.
The obstinate peasant insists upon it that a lawsuit is always a
sufficient reason for hating a man. And thereupon he undertakes to
explain the lawsuit, and how Count Claudieuse, by stopping the water of
the Seille, overflowed M. de Boiscoran’s meadows.
The president at last stops the discussion, and orders another witness
to be brought in.
This man swears he has heard M. de Boiscoran say, that, sooner or later,
he would put a ball into Count Claudieuse. He adds, that the accused
is a terrible man, who threatened to shoot people upon the slightest
provocation. And, to support his evidence, he states that once before,
to the knowledge of the whole country, M. de Boiscoran has fired at a
man.
The accused undertakes to explain this. A scamp, who he thinks was no
one else but the witness on the stand, came every night and stole his
tenants’ fruit and vegetables. One night he kept watch, and gave him a
load of salt. He does not know whether he hit him. At all events, the
thief never complained, and thus was never found out.
The next witness is a constable from Brechy. He deposes that once Count
Claudieuse, by stopping up the waters of the little stream, the
Seille, had caused M. de Boiscoran a loss of twenty thousand weight of
first-rate hay. He confesses that such a bad neighbor would certainly
have exasperated him.
The prosecuting attorney does not deny the fact, but adds, that Count
Claudieuse offered to pay damages. M. de Boiscoran had refused with
insulting haughtiness.
The accused replies, that he had refused upon the advice of his lawyer,
but that he had not used insulting words.
Next appeared the witnesses summoned by the defence.
The first is the excellent priest from Brechy. He confirms the statement
of the accused. He was dining, the evening of the crime, at the house
of M. de Besson; his servant had come for him; and the parsonage was
deserted. He states that he had really arranged with M. de Boiscoran
that the latter should come some evening of that week to fulfil the
religious duties which the church requires before it allows a marriage
to be consecrated. He has known Jacques de Boiscoran from a child, and
knows no better and no more honorable man. In his opinion, that hatred,
of which so much has been said, never had any existence. He cannot
believe, and does not believe, that the accused is guilty.
The second witness is the priest of an adjoining parish. He states,
that, between nine and ten o’clock, he was on the road, near the
Marshalls’ Cross-roads. The night was quite dark. He is of the same size
as the priest at Brechy; and the little girl might very well have taken
him for the latter, thus misleading M. de Boiscoran.
Three other witnesses are introduced; and then, as neither the accused
nor his counsel have any thing to add, the prosecuting attorney begins
his speech.
[The Charge.]
M. Gransiere’s eloquence is so widely known, and so justly appreciated,
that we need not refer to it here. We will only say that he surpassed
himself in this charge, which, for more than an hour, held the large
assembly in anxious and breathless suspense, and caused all hearts to
vibrate with the most intense excitement.
He commences with a description of Valpinson, “this poetic and charming
residence, where the noble old trees of Rochepommier are mirrored in the
crystal waves of the Seille.
“There,” he went on to say,--“there lived the Count and the Countess
Claudieuse,--he one of those noblemen of a past age who worshipped
honor, and were devoted to duty; she one of those women who are the
glory of their sex, and the perfect model of all domestic virtues.
“Heaven had blessed their union, and given them two children, to whom
they were tenderly attached. Fortune smiled upon their wise efforts.
Esteemed by all, cherished, and revered, they lived happy, and might
have counted upon long years of prosperity.
“But no. Hate was hovering over them.
“One evening, a fatal glare arouses the count. He rushes out; he hears
the report of a gun. He hears it a second time, and he sinks down,
bathed in his blood. The countess also is alarmed by the explosion, and
hastens to the spot: she stumbles; she sees the lifeless body of her
husband, and sinks unconscious to the ground.
“Are the children also to perish? No. Providence watches. A flash of
intelligence pierces the night of an insane man, who rushes through
the flames, and snatches the children from the fire that was already
threatening their couch.
“Their lives are saved; but the fire continues its destructive march.
“At the sound of the terrible fire-bell, all the inhabitants of the
neighboring villages hurry to the spot. But there is no one to direct
their efforts; there are no engines; and they can do nothing.
“But all of a sudden a distant rumbling sound revives hope in their
hearts. They know the fire-engines are coming. They come; they reach the
spot; and whatever men can do is done at once.
“But great God! What mean those cries of horror which suddenly rise on
all sides? The roof of the house is falling, and buries under its ruins
two men, the most zealous and most courageous of all the zealous and
courageous men,--Bolton the drummer, who had just now summoned his
neighbors to come to the rescue, and Guillebault, a father with five
children.
“High above the crash and the hissing of flames rise their heart-rending
cries. They call for help. Will they be allowed to perish? A gendarme
rushes forward, and with him a farmer from Brechy. But their heroism
is useless: the monster keeps its prey. The two men also are apparently
doomed; and only by unheard-of efforts, and at great peril of life, can
they be rescued from the furnace. But they are so grievously wounded,
that they will remain infirm for the rest of their lives, compelled to
appeal to public charity for their subsistence.”
Then the prosecuting attorney proceeds to paint the whole of the
disaster at Valpinson in the sombrest colors, and with all the resources
of his well-known eloquence. He describes the Countess Claudieuse as
she kneels by the side of her dying husband, while the crowd is eagerly
pressing around the wounded man and struggling with the flames for the
charred remains of the unfortunate firemen. With increasing vehemence,
he says next,--
“And during all this time what becomes of the author of these fearful
misdeeds? When his hatred is gratified, he flees through the wood, and
returns to his home. Remorse, there is none. As soon as he reaches the
house, he eats, drinks, smokes his cigar. His position in the country is
such, and the precautionary measures he had taken appear to him so well
chosen, that he thinks he is above suspicion. He is calm. He feels so
perfectly safe, that he neglects the commonest precautions, and does not
even take the trouble of pouring out the water in which he has washed
his hands, blackened as they are by the fire he has just kindled.
“He forgets that Providence whose torch on great occasions illumines and
guides human justice.
“And how, indeed, could the law ever have expected to find the guilty
man in one of the most magnificent chateaux of the country but for a
direct intervention of Providence?
“For the incendiary, the assassin, was actually there, at the Chateau
Boiscoran.
“And let no one come and tell us that the past life of Jacques de
Boiscoran is such as to protect him against the formidable charges that
are brought against him. We know his past life.
“A perfect model of those idle young men who spend in riotous living a
fortune painfully amassed by their fathers, Jacques de Boiscoran had not
even a profession. Useless to society, a burden to himself, he passed
through life like a ship without rudder and without compass, indulging
in all kinds of unhealthy fashions in order to spend the hours that were
weighing heavily upon him.
“And yet he was ambitious; but his ambition lay in the direction of
those dangerous and wicked intrigues which inevitably lead men to crime.
“Hence we see him mixed up with all those sterile and wanton party
movements which discredit our days, uttering over and over again hollow
phrases in condemnation of all that is noble and sacred, appealing to
the most execrable passions of the multitude”--
M. MAGLOIRE.--If this is a political affair, we ought to be informed
beforehand.
ATTORNEY-GENERAL.--There is no question of politics here. We speak of
the life of a man who has been an apostle of strife.