In a marriage register more than a century old, two letters might suffice to transform the dignity of a name. The prosecution described a “de” inserted before Visseq in the margin, in the body of the deed, and alongside the signature: this particle was intended to bestow upon a common family the semblance of a nobility whereof all other records bore not the slightest trace. It was not an entire pedigree that required rewriting, but a fleeting mark, repeated at those precise junctures where the eye returns to verify the identity of the spouses.
The cause was tried before the Court of Assizes of the Hérault at its sitting of 22 February. The Gazette, which reported the proceedings on 26 and 27 February 1877, named M. Bellac, councillor of the Court of Appeal of Montpellier, as presiding judge. Cuvilier, styled by the journal as “Cuvilier (Hujeune),” was fifty-seven years of age. He styled himself an archivist, was born at Vissigencourt, and had his domicile in Paris. The Gazette records that the bill of indictment linked his name to that of Albert Visseq-Laprade, a Montpellier landowner, ever since their meeting in Paris in 1875.
Visseq-Laprade sought to trace his lineage as far back as inquiry might reach. According to the narrative laid before the court, Cuvilier promised to prove his descent from a noble family named de Vissée, established in Languedoc since the tenth century, whose male line had purportedly become extinct. The searches commenced in Paris bore no fruit. Cuvilier had received two hundred francs for these labours; he explained that he must needs examine the registries and public archives of the Midi, wherein the coveted proofs might lie dormant.
An agreement was struck that he should journey to Lodève at an allowance of ten francs per diem. He arrived there around July 1876. The account then delineates two divergent currents: Cuvilier, it was said, took greater contentment in this comfortable tenure than in the progress of his researches and sought to prolong it; Visseq-Laprade, on the contrary, pressed the accused to transmit the promised proofs. The interval between the undertaking and its fulfilment was thus measured in daily fees, while the client waited upon a document that might tether his name to the illustrious house he claimed.
In September 1876, Cuvilier repaired to the registry of the Civil Tribunal of Lodève. Several registers of vital records prior to the Revolution were laid before him, notably those of the ancient parish of Saint-Jean-de-Fos. The report enumerates sixty-one volumes that, for many years, had been shown to no one. These tomes afforded the means of collating an isolated record with the wider acts of the same kin. Among them was the register containing the marriage of Antoine Visseq and Élisabeth Laval.
The account of the discovery assigns to this act the date of 11 February 1751. The records pertaining to this same family prefixed neither the name nor the signature of Visseq with any noble particle whatsoever. It was precisely this silence that Cuvilier’s promise had been intended to supply. After some twenty days, the registrar ordered him to discontinue his researches; his conduct appeared suspect, reports the Gazette, and Cuvilier quit Lodève.
On 31 October, an application for an official extract of the act, made indirectly on Cuvilier’s behalf, brought the registrar back to the archives. He inspected the register of Saint-Jean-de-Fos and observed that the record had been altered at no distant date. The particle “de” had been added in the margin, in the text of the deed, and before the signature. The ink, according to the report, was still fresh when the alteration was detected.
Suspicion did not rest merely upon the alteration of a surname. Cuvilier’s role in the affair was equally telling: he had consulted the volume during his researches and was pledged to furnish Visseq-Laprade with proof of noble extraction. The prosecution contended that he alone had had the altered register at his disposal for many years, and that he had an evident interest in contriving a forgery to prefix his patron’s name with a noble particle. A handwriting examination conducted during the preliminary inquiry, the journal adds, gave an absolute lie to the prisoner’s denials.
The indictment set forth the specific charge: at Lodève, in the marriage record of Antoine Visseq and Élisabeth Laval, Cuvilier was alleged to have interpolated after the fact the particle “de,” in the margin, in the body of the deed, and beside the signature. The formal text placed this entry at the date of 11 June 1751, whereas the narrative of the act assigned it to 11 February of the same year. The Gazette offers no resolution to this discrepancy; it must stand as the contemporary account has transmitted it.
The forgery charged struck at an authentic public record, and the article cites Articles 147 and 148 of the Penal Code. The judicial phrasing reflects the gravity which the prosecution attached to the interpolation: this small addition was presented not as an inconsequential flourish, but as an alteration of the terms, declarations, or facts intended to be received by the deed. For Visseq-Laprade, this purported particle was meant to unlock an ancestral line.
At the trial, the witnesses examined did not, according to the newspaper, alter the material facts set out in the indictment. Cuvilier persisted in his denials. M. Jouvion, Advocate General, sustained the charge; Me Brenot appeared for the defence. Then followed the negative verdict of the jury: Cuvilier was acquitted and set at liberty without delay.
The conclusion does not, therefore, substantiate the accusation that the narrative had set forth at length. The article supplies neither the grounds for the verdict nor the reasoning of the jurors; it records only their answer and its legal consequences. The particle had been seen, the handwriting had been scrutinised, the denials had endured, yet the court did not pronounce guilt. These elements must be weighed together, without confounding the registrar’s suspicions or the prosecutor’s thesis with the final judgment.
There remains that particle, inscribed three times upon an ancient sheet, and the immense consequence it was intended to produce. The registers had traversed generations without their silence being construed as a deficiency; the cause suddenly demanded of them to say more than the names of the bridal pair. Yet, when the court rose, the jury declined to follow the prosecution. Thus the trial closed: neither with a pedigree recovered, nor with a sentence of condemnation, but with the acquittal of the man charged with having penned the alteration.