On the eighth of July, 1608, after supper, Pierre Romain departed Toulouse in the company of Gairaud, a councillor to the seneschal, the latter’s son, and two companions. They returned by way of the Arnaud-Bernard gate. Behind the Collège de l’Esquile, in a deserted spot, four or five men lay in wait. Two thrust Gairaud aside; the others fell upon Romain, dealing him seventeen thrusts of sword or dagger, according to the relation set down several years later by Guillaume de Ségla.
When the capitoul hastened to the scene, Gairaud was already offering a different tale: strangers had stripped him of his purse, then turned upon his companion. Ségla’s narrative sets this magistrate at the very heart of a murder for which he would soon stand accused. As both judge and rapporteur, Ségla delivered an impassioned chronicle shaped by court debates and his own recollections, rather than a dispassionate official record. Depositions, facts, and his personal commentary continually intertwine; to part them is the reader’s first task.
A Matrimonial Compact, a Contested Debt
Two months earlier, on the first of May, Gairaud had assisted in framing the contract uniting Romain, an advocate from Gimont, to Violante de Bats du Château. A Portuguese woman and widow of Sébastien Monserroso de Reines, she brought nine hundred livres arising from an augmentation of the dower pledged during her first marriage. She maintained that her father still owed her eighteen hundred livres. Romain was to return to Toulouse to prosecute this claim.
The nuptials were solemnized at the house of François Esbaldit, a legal practitioner, where Violante lodged. She soon joined her husband and, according to Ségla, prevailed upon him to serve process upon her father: this contested debt drew Romain directly toward the city where he was to meet his death.
At the beginning of July, Romain lodged at an inn in the Saint-Cyprien quarter before accepting Gairaud’s hospitality. On the evening of the assault, Gairaud’s son and a student walked with them for a time; Antoine Candolas pressed ahead under the pretext of having a gate unlocked. According to Ségla, Gairaud and Romain were left alone.
The cries of the affray drew nearby residents, who alerted the capitoul. The corpse was conveyed to the Hôtel de Ville. Within the dead man's garments, the officers discovered money, papers, the power of attorney granted by Violante, and a petition directed against her father. The family dossier had traveled alongside the victim.
Contradictory Accounts
Gairaud maintained that he had surrendered his purse to the assailants and had seen them subsequently strike Romain down. He claimed the body for burial. Ségla relates that the authorities apprehended Esbaldit, who was encountered alone, breathless, and without a light. Esbaldit acknowledged his friendship with Romain but at first denied any knowledge of the homicide; after his examination, he was discharged. On the morrow, Gairaud caused a letter to be sent to Violante informing her of the demise and pledging to pursue the perpetrators.
The surrendered purse, the reclaimed corpse, and the formal complaint might have served to exonerate Gairaud; yet the investigators took note of letters, sudden departures, and ties of long standing. In July, the capitouls decreed the arrest of Violante, Esbaldit, and the Augustinian friar Pierre Arrias Burdeus; they took measures against Jean Candolas and his son Antoine, and summoned Gairaud to appear.
The portrait of Violante is that drawn by Ségla and his witnesses, not an objective likeness. The author construes familiar letters, visits, and gestures as evidence of moral turpitude. This moralizing view governs his reading of the murder, yet it does not of itself establish that she commanded the assault.
Suspicions against Burdeus soon became entangled in a jurisdictional conflict. Having quit Toulouse on the fourteenth of July with the younger Candolas, he traveled down the Garonne with books, a mattress, and chests, eventually making his way to Nîmes. Ségla interprets this departure as flight. Burdeus and Candolas sought to have their cause heard before the Chamber of the Edict at Castres, claiming they had embraced the Reformed religion; the prosecution contested the date of this profession and their entitlement to invoke that forum.
The affair had now outgrown the murder itself. The municipal magistrates had commenced the preliminary examination; the Parlement demanded cognizance of the cause. On the fourth of November, 1608, the King remitted Burdeus and Candolas to the Parlement of Toulouse. Committed to its prisons on the twenty-sixth of November, they were examined alongside the other accused. Ségla records that he was appointed among the commissioners of the inquiry, noting that he interrogated Burdeus over four days.
Proof Preceding Sentence
The chronicle details confrontations, the re-examination of witnesses, and searches for letters across several towns. By late December, many magistrates deemed the proofs insufficient; the First President deferred judgment. Ségla states that fresh letters and depositions subsequently augmented the dossier, though he does not transcribe them in full.
The sharpest division appears in Ségla’s own words. Certain councillors favored condemning Burdeus to death while holding the fate of the others in reserve. Ségla and several colleagues regarded the proofs as too obscure to justify an irrevocable sentence. They proposed putting Candolas and Esbaldit to the question, then awaiting their answers. Ségla drew a distinction between the accusations of illicit intimacy, which he considered partially established, and complicity in the murder, which he held insufficiently demonstrated. He writes that he found against Burdeus neither witness, nor deed, nor indubitable presumption of his involvement in the assassination.
The majority ultimately voted for Burdeus’s condemnation. On the fifth of February, 1609, he was executed. Ségla reports that prior to his death, under the question, Burdeus admitted to having consented to the design and stated that Gairaud had twice spoken to him of making away with Romain. He died declaring that he had been justly condemned. These utterances occupy a central place in the narrative, yet they were obtained under torture; they cannot be treated as a voluntary deposition whose weight might be assessed in isolation.
In the days that followed, the Parlement turned its scrutiny upon Gairaud. Aged sixty-six, and a councillor for thirty-five years according to Ségla, he had hitherto evaded condemnation. The magistrates weighed his relations with Violante, his role in the marriage, his grievances against Romain, and the inconsistencies in his replies. He denied taking part in the attack, but the court ordered him put to the ordinary and extraordinary question. After a first interrogation, he disclosed nothing new. Ségla recounts that he then remained nearly a full day without sustenance. The First President promised him food and drink if he would speak the truth; in an usher’s chamber, Gairaud requested a private audience with the magistrate and ended by revealing the conspiracy.
Sentence was pronounced against him on the twelfth of February, condemning him to the same penalty as Burdeus. Ségla depicts this confession as decisive. Yet the circumstance is as material as the substance: it was obtained while the prisoner was subjected to torture, starvation, and anxiety over the fate awaiting his son.
Condemnations and Absentees
Antoine Candolas was condemned on the thirteenth of February, his testimony having shifted under the question. Ségla reports that he accused Burdeus and Gairaud, but sued for mercy on behalf of Esbaldit, whom he styled his brother. He described men led to the scene of the assault and stated he had warned Esbaldit of Romain’s approach. The author weaves these admissions together with the magistrates’ own deductions; the volume provides no independent transcript against which to test the accounts.
Esbaldit was judged on the fourteenth of February. The narrative assigns him the role of intermediary: he was privy to the plot, had forewarned one of the assailants, and knew that poison had initially been considered. Under torture, he named Pradier and two men unknown to him. Those condemned alongside Violante were not the armed assailants in the alley. The presumed executioners remained largely beyond reach; justice struck instead at the organizers and intimates whose words, letters, or flights had been turned against them.
The court pronounced upon Violante two days later. Ségla writes that she was condemned to death and that the magistrates deliberated over the manner of her execution. When the question was announced to her, she refused to confess. After making her peace with God through confession, she asked to speak with the First President and declared—according to the minutes summarized by Ségla—that she had consented to the murder and received poison which she did not employ. She added her belief that her intimates intended to kill Romain. This declaration, made following the decree of torture during a coercive proceeding and recorded by a magistrate defending the court's actions, does not convert previous allegations into independently established facts. Ségla records that she was executed, without specifying the precise day.
Jean Candolas, the father, escaped condemnation: on the twenty-first of February, the Parlement cleared him and ordered his release. Concerning Bertrand Mealhe, a practitioner connected to the rapporteur, the court directed further inquiry. These outcomes demonstrate that the bench distinguished among persons and the degrees of proof.
The men accused of having struck the blows had not all been taken. Ségla asserts that in 1612 Mathieu Larroque was arrested, condemned, and executed on the fourteenth of the month. At the scaffold, according to this narrative, he confessed to having slain Romain alongside Pradier and a man named Jean. He added that Esbaldit had invited them to supper on the night of the murder, and that he had believed they were merely to beat the victim. This late revelation, preserved by the same pen, reopens what the sentences appeared to have settled: the divide between those condemned by the Parlement for their consent or assistance, and those who struck Romain down in the dark.
Ségla’s chronicle is at once a historical narrative, a judicial memorial, and an apologia. It preserves genuine dissension among magistrates, the construction of proof, and confessions wrung by the question; it also transforms morals, religion, and reputation into instruments of guilt. To read the case today requires holding both aspects in view: the decrees rendered, and the prejudices that governed the manner of their telling.