The boy had gone to gather wild strawberries. When he returned toward the oak tree where his master had lain down to rest, he encountered a man walking away, who shook his fist at him. The threat did not yet explain to the lad what had just transpired; it merely forbade him, in advance, from speaking of it. A few paces further on, Jules Devauversin came upon the farmer Drouot lying motionless. He called out to him, but received no answer. At fourteen years of age, the young servant had become the witness whom an adult had sought, prior to any inquiry, to reduce to silence.
Drouot worked a farm at Jubercy, in the department of the Marne. On that morning in 1827, he had sent Jules to lead three horses out to pasture in the communal reserve of Oger. He had joined him half an hour later, accompanied by his dog, and had stretched out upon the grass at the foot of a tree. The boy had asked leave to wander off for a moment. Everything still belonged to the ordinary routine of the farm: watching the beasts, enjoying a brief halt, and returning when the dog barked. It was upon hearing the animal that Jules had turned back.
Jules could name the man: Martin Coutier. He had seen him moving away from the oak, close enough to see his gesture and hear his menace. Yet the boy had not seen the blow struck. The entire difficulty of his position lay within that single distinction. What he knew rendered him an invaluable witness; what he did not know left to the judicial inquiry a task that neither his terror nor the violence of the words hurled at him could accomplish in his stead. Drouot answered no longer. The boy would have to answer for him, without attributing to his master’s final moments scenes he had not witnessed.
Drouot had suffered a mortal blow to the head. His wife soon arrived beside the body and spoke of a sum of money promised for his murder, mentioning the figure of one hundred écus. A forest guard named Boulé reported having heard her declare that her husband had told her of this very threat the previous evening. Thus, the discovery of the corpse did not merely give rise to fresh suspicions; it brought back to light words that certain individuals claimed to have received prior to the deed. It remained for justice to determine who had proposed what, and to whom, and to separate an announced threat from an actual payment rendered.
In the afternoon, the dead man’s son-in-law, Remi Chiquet, presented himself in turn. He immediately showed anxiety regarding what people might think of him. A bystander reminded him that he had previously threatened his father-in-law; Chiquet replied that he had not set foot outside his house all morning. The widow added a remark concerning a proposition made to Martin Coutier before abruptly checking herself. These exchanges, preserved by the chronicler, directed attention toward a relationship between the two men. Yet they did not suffice to explain their respective roles. One had been seen near the body; the other had publicly wished for the demise of the man who now lay dead.
The family dispute reached back to the marriage of April 10, 1826. Chiquet had wed Émilie-Arsène, Drouot’s only daughter, then sixteen years and some months old. The young couple were to take part in the farm work and be lodged and boarded under its roof. The chronicle then describes the son-in-law’s ambition to usurp the place of the farmer, who had no intention of retiring. Shared lodging and common labor offered no guarantee of concord regarding the future. What the one regarded as an impending succession remained, for the other, an enterprise he still intended to command.
Their quarrels had long since escalated beyond mere reproaches. The record relates that during one altercation, Chiquet had seized an axe to threaten Drouot. The farmer had countered by invoking the presence of the young servant, who could denounce him. The son-in-law had then reportedly turned upon Jules with a knife, but the boy, overhearing, had fled. In this episode, cited among the charges, the child’s presence had sufficed to divert the son-in-law’s violence onto him. At the foot of the oak, Coutier’s threat placed him once again in the very same perilous position: poised between what a man had done and what another might learn of it. His tender years had shielded him from neither.
Drouot’s daughter was likewise implicated. Insults and threats were imputed to her, as well as participation in the couple’s departure from the farm after carrying off money and clothing from the household wardrobe. The source presents this conduct with particular severity toward a daughter turned against her father. The judicial file summarized therein requires, however, an essential clarification: the indictment placing Émilie-Arsène under formal accusation was annulled. She did not appear among the three defendants. The son, the brother, the wife: the ties uniting individuals beneath a single roof did not suffice to grant them an identical station before the judges.
The prosecution brought Martin Coutier, Remi Chiquet, and the latter’s brother, Magloire, before the Court of Assizes of the Marne. Coutier stood accused of having committed the homicide with premeditation. The two brothers were prosecuted for having instigated the crime through promises and for having furnished the necessary instructions. This division explains why a defense resting upon having never left one’s home did not address the full scope of the charge leveled against Remi. The question was not merely who stood near the tree; it concerned also what might have been agreed upon before Drouot ever set out.
Coutier admitted that an offer had been made to him by Remi Chiquet, but maintained that he had refused it. The son-in-law denied ever having made such an overture. Between these two positions, the contradiction was precise: the one admitted the words while denying their execution; the other denied the conversation altogether. Coutier, for his part, pleaded an alibi which, according to the chronicle, he was unable to establish. The absence he claimed was shattered by the testimony of Jules, whose steps had brought him back to the tree at the most inconvenient moment for the fugitive. The boy who had gone off in search of wild strawberries had no reason to anticipate so grave an encounter; the man who had threatened him, however, had instantly perceived what it might cost him.
The trial opened on August 6, 1827, and the proceedings lasted three days. The accusation was maintained against Coutier and Remi Chiquet, but abandoned by the public prosecutor against Magloire. The text does not reproduce a distinct ruling detailing the ultimate legal fate of the latter; it merely records that the two principal defendants were found guilty and condemned to death. It would be erroneous to extend this sentence to the brother, just as it would be improper to include the wife within it. In a family tragedy, blood ties may bring names together upon the page, but they never excuse the court from separating them in the verdict.
The narrative concludes upon the demeanor of the two condemned men at the reading of the sentence. It recounts neither their appeals nor their execution. Capital punishment remains the final judicial event this chronicle allows us to affirm in their regard. The chronicler takes pains to emphasize their expressions; what matters more here is the distance traversed by the prosecution, from the solitary man glimpsed near a tree to the design of a son-in-law impatient to supplant his father-in-law. The investigation was required to connect these two extremities, without confounding the witnesses to each.
Jules Devauversin received no further chapter detailing his life after the trial. We know only that he called out to his master and that his master did not reply. The affair thus preserves the memory of a child whom two men, at different hours, sought to reduce to silence. The farmer had once invoked his presence as a shield; it had not saved him. Yet when the time came to recount what had transpired around his death, the threat uttered against the boy became itself a piece of testimony that justice was bound to hear.