The heavy blows echoed through the stairwell as though armed men were already mounting the steps. That was precisely what Ourliac wished them to believe. Striking the treads with the butt of a carbine, he stepped forward to face the prisoners and held them at bay. Beyond, the threshold of escape had just swung wide; three inmates had fled, the gaoler lay mortally wounded, and his young grandson had been slain. Yet the man barring the way to the rest was himself a prisoner.
He had to hold his ground until help arrived. The clamour had feigned a force that had not yet materialised; the carbine had to lend this bluff sufficient weight to check any fresh surge toward freedom. Ourliac commanded nothing beyond his own presence, the weapon, and the fleeting hesitation he had managed to instil. Another prisoner had already knelt over the fallen keeper. Within the gaol of Castelsarrasin, two men kept under lock and key were striving to preserve what one of their own fellows had just laid waste.
The Child’s Light
The keeper was named Dutronc. He was sixty years of age, and bore the reputation of treating his charges with a kindness of which several, long after their release, still spoke. This favourable character, recorded by the Gazette, carries singular weight in the affair. The prison was no mere station where he presented himself at fixed hours: his daughter, a girl of seventeen or eighteen, dwelt there alongside him. His grandson came each evening to assist him on his rounds. The domestic life of this family unfolded upon the far side of the selfsame doors that confined the prisoners.
On 5 December, the inmates had obtained permission to sup together, two newly arrived companions having paid for the repast. An indulgence granted, men gathered round a board, the keeper’s rounds to conduct one of them back to another chamber: nothing in this customary sequence yet bespoke an ambuscade. Dutronc knew the habits of his house. He took the child along, who carried a light before him.
The boy would have stepped forward with that earnest gravity which children so willingly bring to the labours of grown men when entrusted with a share of them. Keeping the taper upright, yielding passage in the narrow corridors, awaiting the turn of his grandfather’s key: a few small duties sufficed to secure his place upon the evening watch. We imagine these gestures, for the dispatch preserves neither his Christian name nor his age; it leaves us only the taper he carried and the fact that he accompanied Dutronc every night.
Toward eight o'clock, the door of the common room stood ajar. Laforgue, known as Baraquet, threw himself upon the keeper and bore him to the floor. He was detained under an indictment for theft. The door that Dutronc had come to unlock to finish his evening round became, for the assailant, the threshold of his flight.
Baraquet struck the old man down with a knife. The child cried out for help and attempted to flee; he was struck in his turn and slain. Behind him, Dutronc had left open the doors through which he had just passed. The assailant seized the key to the main gate and hastened below. To reach the street, he no longer had to overcome locks: he had only to contend with the living.
Those in His Path
Dutronc’s daughter had heard the cries. Rushing toward the sound, she found herself face-to-face with Baraquet, weapon still in hand. She recoiled, then stepped forward again to bar his way. He seized her and flung her violently across a table. She managed, however, to slip beneath an adjoining bedstead.
In that narrow refuge, the floorboards abruptly replaced the staircase she had so boldly mounted. She could no longer rush to her father’s aid; she was compelled to let the man who had just assaulted her pass by. One can picture the heavy tread close at hand, the breath held fast, the wooden valance barely concealing her form. The gazette records nothing of her thoughts. Her actions suffice: she had attempted resistance, then found the means to survive. She remained within the house while Baraquet gained the portal.
Outside, Fernando, a drummer in the National Guard, had likewise caught the alarm. He was hammering upon the outer door at the very moment the fugitive moved to unbolt it. Both sought to cross the selfsame threshold in opposing directions: the one to render aid, the other to break away. Fernando strove to apprehend Baraquet, receiving two mortal wounds for his pains. A woman who witnessed the affray raised the hue and cry.
Three prisoners made good their escape. The others might easily have followed. It was at this juncture that Ourliac made the stairs ring with his carbine and stayed their flight, while a second inmate attempted to succour Dutronc. When the King’s prosecutor, the examining magistrate, and the gendarmes arrived upon the scene, they found a prison that two captive men had, so far as lay within their power, kept from collapse. Their intervention had neither restored the child to life nor preserved the gaoler from death. But it had arrested the widening of the disaster.
Windows to Light the Hunt
Castelsarrasin possessed no street lanterns in those days. The pursuit was launched into the blackness of night, amidst hastily formed patrols, descriptions dispatched to neighbouring communes, and a mobilised National Guard. The inhabitants set candles in their casements. That which was customarily done on nights of public rejoicing to display civic pride now served to manifest the town’s terror.
From one dwelling to the next, each pale glimmer revealed a patch of lane, the corner of a wall, the sudden dart of a hurried shadow, while leaving the rest plunged in gloom. For those who searched, dread sprang from that which remained unseen; for those peering from behind their windowpanes, it lay in the peril of recognising the passing figure too late. The news had broken the prison walls. It now inhabited every hearth.
At Lavit, where Baraquet had his dwelling, word spread that he sought vengeance against several members of his own family. This rumour circulated like a contagion, and men were already acting under its sway. A detachment of the National Guard learned that he had allegedly sought refuge at the home of his brother-in-law. The following night, they went to thunder at that very door.
Startled from his sleep, the brother-in-law believed that Baraquet had come to butcher him. Far from seeking out those who might have reassured him, he leaped straight out of a window. The guards caught sight of a fleeing form and instantly took him for the quarry they sought. They levelled their pieces and fired.
The volley missed him. He threw himself into a ditch, toward which the guards advanced with fixed bayonets. Only his desperate supplications brought them to recognise their error. One man had fled in the belief that a murderer had returned; others had fired in the belief that they were cutting down a fugitive. Fear had furnished them all with a ready explanation—one that came within an ace of claiming another innocent life.
The Return of Baraquet
One of the runaways was recaptured in Castelsarrasin on the very night of the crime. Baraquet was taken four days later by the National Guard of Dunes. Upon his return, the populace crowded the thoroughfares and lined the country roads. At last, he could be observed under escort; yet the dread had by no means dissipated. His capture put an end to his flight, but it could not give back to the townspeople the terror of those long hours during which he was imagined lurking behind every door.
The third fugitive, a lad of seventeen named Richard, remained at large when the dispatch was published on 2 February 1832. The judicial inquiry was also tasked with determining whether other inmates had participated in a concerted plot of assassination and escape. Depositions and admissions pointed toward prior design; yet they did not justify casting all the prisoners indiscriminately as accomplices. Indeed, Ourliac and the companion who had remained at Dutronc’s side had demonstrated by their acts how starkly their conduct differed from that of the rest.
A plan of the prison was drafted. The men, the doors, the sites of the violent affrays had all to be charted. Upon a sheet of paper, the staircase became once more a regular flight of steps. The table, the bed, the entry-gate each regained their measured place. To Dutronc’s daughter, these furnishings bore an entirely different scale: between the table and the bed lay the narrow span of floor that had preserved her among the living.
Baraquet, once retaken, spoke of the gaoler’s gentle nature, laying the blame for his crime upon bad counsel. The gazette does not record his final sentence. It leaves him in close confinement, confronted with his deed and an inquiry still underway. Dutronc’s daughter, Ourliac, and the households of the town could not await the assize verdict to begin living with the memory of that night.
The knife, we learn at last, had been lent to Baraquet by Dutronc himself. The keeper’s benevolence had left lasting memories among the men he held in ward. That evening, it met with two opposing answers within the selfsame walls: one had turned it to slaughter; two others had remained to bind wounds and hold fast the door.