On August 28, 1787, the Parlement of Dijon revisited a case that had already sent one man to the gallows and another to the galleys for life. It rehabilitated the memory of Claude Gentil and Guillaume Vauriot; it definitively dismissed the charges brought against Claude Pajot, Antoine Loignon, and Jean-Baptiste Gentil. The same decree summoned the full penalties of the law upon the true culprits, while suspending execution in the case of Larue pending the King’s pleasure. Justice had at last acknowledged its error, seven years after the fact. For Gentil, who had perished upon the scaffold, and Vauriot, sent to the galleys for life, this recognition arrived long after the penalties had been inflicted.
The affair had begun on the night of December 5 to 6, 1780, at the Saint-Michel hermitage near Aignay-le-Duc, in Burgundy. Nicolas Maret, known as Brother Jean, had lived there for more than twenty years. He painted in the surrounding churches and châteaux, worked also at clockmaking, and lived by his industry and his alms. This thrift, combined with his reputation for possessing a modest nest egg, appeared to have drawn the attention of thieves.
Lying in an alcove off the kitchen, he heard a disturbance within his dwelling, and then believed the door was giving way under heavy blows. Several men fell upon him, pulled his cowl down over his eyes, and bound his hands and feet. They pressed him to reveal where his money lay hidden. He denied having any at first; the threats redoubled. He ultimately confessed to possessing nine and a half gold louis in a tin box, concealed within the garden wall across from a tall pear tree.
The men went in search of the box but failed to find it. They then dragged the hermit out to the garden so that he might point out the spot himself. Once the money was secured, they carried him back to his bed and resumed their search of the house. They carried off a brass watch, the case of a silver watch he had been repairing, some sugar, and two half-bottles of liqueur. Before taking their leave, they tightened his bonds. They took his habit, telling him they would hang it conspicuously upon a tree before the hermitage so that passersby might discover him. Brother Jean thus remained alone, bound and half-frozen, until help arrived.
He had long been acquainted with the Gentil family of Aignay. The mother, ailing and near death, had entrusted him with her keys during her absences; he had urged Jean-Baptiste, one of her sons, to summon him to pray at her bedside during her final hours. On that already difficult night, Jean-Baptiste had left his mother between midnight and one o'clock to escort his sister Marie home. On his way back, he noticed a light at the hermitage. He returned home, learned that his mother’s condition had worsened, and set out once more to fetch Brother Jean.
The small gate of the hermitage was closed. Jean-Baptiste climbed over the wall and reached the kitchen, the door of which stood ajar. From the alcove, the hermit cried out for him to approach and begged him to untie his bonds. Jean-Baptiste kindled a fire, warmed his friend, and dressed his bruised arm with hot wine. Brother Jean, too shaken to walk down to the sickbed, asked him to return to his mother and come back half an hour later. He enjoined him to keep absolute silence regarding the robbery.
Upon Jean-Baptiste’s second return, the hermit resumed his account, claiming to have recognized three men by their voices: Vauriot, Chaumonot, and Claude Gentil—the listener’s own brother. Jean-Baptiste was struck with horror by the accusation. He objected that Claude had been in bed when he returned to his mother, that he had awakened him before going up to the hermitage, and that Vauriot and his brother were on bitter terms; less than a fortnight earlier, Claude had lodged a formal complaint against him before the King's prosecutor. Brother Jean promised not to denounce Claude, while permitting Jean-Baptiste to report the robbery without disclosing that the perpetrators were known.
Yet the secret could not hold. When Jean-Baptiste returned to his mother's house, he recounted the condition in which he had found the hermit. Claude Gentil and Antoine Loignon walked up to the hermitage in his company. Brother Jean had already fled the premises and sought refuge at Beaunotte, at the home of the curate Latour. There, he related the attack in the presence of the King's prosecutor. The magistrate proceeded to the hermitage and drew up his official report: there they discovered a fowling piece belonging to the clerk Caillard, a log that had served to batter down the kitchen door, the damaged portion of the wall near the hidden cache, and the visible bruises upon the hermit’s arm. The neighboring shed in which Caillard kept his firearm had also been forced.
The robbery and breaking-and-entering were established beyond doubt; the identity of the thieves rested upon far more fragile ground. The preliminary inquiry commenced the following day. On December 12, warrants for the arrest of Claude Gentil, Guillaume Vauriot, and Claude Pajot were issued. The following spring, the provost transferred the entire case to the bailiwick of Châtillon. A fresh inquiry was ordered; Antoine Loignon and Jean-Baptiste Gentil were arrested in turn. The proceedings dragged on for more than a year, yet the trial failed to yield the certainties that the initial accusations had seemed to promise.
On December 7, 1781, the court sentenced Vauriot to be hanged after being subjected to torture under both the ordinary and extraordinary question. With respect to Claude Gentil, Pajot, Loignon, and Jean-Baptiste, judgment was deferred until after Vauriot’s execution. An appeal before the Parlement of Dijon completely overturned this initial distribution of guilt. Without hearing new witnesses and without noting any variation in the interrogations, the court designated Claude Gentil as the principal culprit and condemned him to the gallows.
Gentil was put to the question on March 13, 1782. He confessed neither to the crime nor to the accomplices he was pressed to name. At the foot of the gallows, he protested his innocence once more, and died by the executioner's hand. On March 19, the court handed down its decrees regarding the others: Vauriot was condemned to the galleys for life; Pajot and Loignon were remanded for further, indefinite investigation; Jean-Baptiste was discharged from court. Vauriot, who had initially been doomed to the same fate as Gentil, was ultimately sent to the galleys for life.
As for Jean-Baptiste, he emerged from prison without the means to pursue his vindication, reduced to utter penury. Weeks elapsed before he could gather sufficient funds to travel to Montargis. There, he learned that a colporteur was hawking printed accounts of sentences pronounced against convicted thieves. A niece, drawn by curiosity, had observed that one of these broadsides bore a striking resemblance to the facts of her uncle’s trial. Every detail coincided with the robbery at the hermitage: the forced entry, the bindings, the nine and a half gold louis, the specific items carried away.
At Montargis, Jean-Baptiste procured copies of the sentences and brought them back to Dijon. He informed the Procureur Général of the Parlement, who urged him to secure counsel in order to obtain his own exoneration and that of his co-defendants. The jurist Daubenton agreed to champion his cause. The printed judgments concerned Jacques Périssol, Charles-Noël Larue, and three other men, who had been convicted of attacking a hermit in another jurisdiction. They also mentioned Marguerite Roussel, suspected of harboring knowledge of the theft and receiving a share of the spoils. Périssol and Roussel had been condemned to be hanged; Larue was still detained in the gaol at Montargis.
Interrogated on January 22, 1785, Larue detailed the circumstances of the robbery and named his four accomplices. The prosecutor asked him whether Gentil, Vauriot, Pajot, Loignon, or Jean-Baptiste Gentil had taken part. Larue replied that they had not, adding that he did not even know them. By letters patent of February 23, 1787, a retrial of the Gentil case was ordered. Larue was brought to Dijon and examined over four separate sessions; he maintained his declarations throughout. He stated that he knew he was doomed to perish, but would not suffer innocent men to be crushed for a crime they had never committed.
Champagnac contrasts this steadfastness with that of Brother Jean, whom he accuses of stubbornly resisting the emerging proofs. He notes as well that the hermit had already been mistaken regarding Chaumonot, whose absence and alibi had been firmly established, and that this error alone should have rendered his voice identifications suspect. The chronicle does not afford access to the original records of every proceeding; it presents the decree of 1787, however, as the definitive judicial conclusion of the revision. The ruling restored the honor and memory of Gentil and Vauriot, cleared the three other accused men, and reserved their right of action against their accusers.
The hermitage had indeed been broken into; Brother Jean had truly been bound and despoiled. What the initial verdicts had lacked, according to the chronicle, was proof that the men designated by his ear were in truth the thieves. When Larue named the culprits who were already being prosecuted in another jurisdiction and exonerated the five original defendants, he offered an answer that the court of review could finally accept. The decree of 1787 cleared their names, but it could not return Gentil to his family. As for Vauriot, sent to the galleys for life in 1782, the chronicle remains silent as to the practical effect of the reversal upon his punishment.