Paris, 1857–1861. Three bakeries discover deficits accumulating across daily bread rounds; three times, Marie-Rosalie Rellanger, known as the wife Gauthier, pits her version of the ledger against that of a master. Before the Assize Court, disputed tallies interweave with the chronicle of her employments and her prior convictions.
On January 3, 1861, the Court of Assizes for the Seine heard the case of a forty-six-year-old bread-carrier. Her name appears under two designations: Marie-Rosalie Rellanger in the opening presentation of the trial, and the wife Gauthier in the paragraphs that follow. The principal figure cited by the prosecution is precise: between July 3 and November 10, the proceeds from merchandise sold for the baker Dubuis were said to have yielded an embezzlement of 855 francs and 50 centimes. Yet this sum was not the only one weighing upon the bar. Since 1857, two other bakeries had likewise reported missing funds. Each house left a debt of an entirely different nature, and each master recounted a term of service that had come to a different end.
The chronicle begins in the Rue Croix-des-Petits-Champs. In February 1857, Rellanger entered the service of Lefoullon, a baker, at a weekly wage of twelve francs. Her task was that of a bread-carrier. By September, Lefoullon began to suspect irregularities. The journal attributes to the examination of his books an uncovered deficit of 650 francs. Lefoullon lodged no formal complaint at that time. According to the Gazette, he caused Rellanger and her husband to subscribe to a formal bond acknowledging the debt and stipulating weekly disbursements of twenty-five francs; a mortgage guarantee was joined to it, but the baker deemed it purely illusory. He declared he had received not a single farthing of indemnification. At the Assizes, Rellanger affirmed, on the contrary, that he had been fully paid. Thus, the initial contention bore not merely upon the principal sum, but upon what had become of the undertaking to repay it.
The account adds that Rellanger did not deny the misappropriations committed against Lefoullon, but contested his declaration that he had remained unsatisfied. The bond cited by the journal lends singular weight to this first employment: the liability had purportedly been acknowledged by the accused and her husband, whereas the stipulated collateral had failed to produce the expected settlement. The text reproduces not the instrument itself; it recounts what Lefoullon and Rellanger said of it, leaving their accounts in unreconciled opposition. The trial thus weighed a written deed, as summarised by the Gazette, against the declaration made by Rellanger from the dock. At the rate announced, discharging 650 francs would have required six-and-twenty weekly instalments, or roughly half a year. Such a reckoning cannot establish whether any payment was ever made; it merely measures the term envisaged according to the journal. The article does not specify how many maturities were allegedly met. The acknowledged debt, the collateral denounced as worthless by the master, and the prisoner’s assertion of complete restitution remain three distinct elements, all transmitted by the selfsame report.
Between this establishment and the next, the Gazette inserts the prisoner’s criminal record. It enumerates four convictions: six months’ imprisonment for theft in May 1854, thirteen months for theft in December 1855, three months for theft in October 1858, and subsequently one year’s imprisonment for breach of trust in May 1859. This catalogue explains the severity of the portrait sketched by the gazette even before returning to the facts contested at the bar. It does not in itself establish what transpired in each individual bakehouse. Elsewhere, the sheet adds that in 1860 Rellanger had just completed a one-year term for theft; it offers no means of reconciling this notice with the sentence of one year for breach of trust which it dated to May 1859.
Having served a term of one year, according to the passage detailing her career, Rellanger found employment with Canord, a baker in the Rue du Buisson-Saint-Louis. She remained there three weeks. The report attributes to Canord an estimated deficit of 72 francs on the value of the bread entrusted to his delivery woman. Deductions levied from her wages were said to have reduced the outstanding balance to 55 francs. Here, the figure shifted because a portion had already been stopped out of her earnings, yet the master declared that the remainder had never been surrendered despite repeated promises.
At the January trial, Rellanger did not tender the same defence as in Lefoullon’s house. She affirmed that Canord had expressly authorised her to sell bread at a reduced price. Canord vehemently denied this. The discrepancy thus hung upon a rule that may or may not have been agreed between them: had the sale at a discount been permitted, the deficit might bear an innocent construction; had it not, it could not account for the divergence noted by the master. The report produces no subscribed paper to settle the matter. It records the prisoner’s assertion and the baker’s denial, leaving the contradiction intact before the jury.
The third employment commenced on July 3, 1860, with Dubuis, in the Rue Saint-Martin. The remuneration was calculated by the loaf sold: two centimes and a half per two-kilogram loaf. For customers who enjoyed no open credit, the reported rule was simple: collect the price and surrender it immediately to the master. It was through the credit tallies that Dubuis grew alarmed. He saw sales expanding, but so too the number of customers inscribed upon the ledger. In verifying these names, he discovered, according to the report, that certain patrons had already paid, that others had never bought their bread from him, and that several did not exist at all. The reported verification advanced thus from the account already settled, to the name belonging to a stranger to the shop, and finally to the wholly fictitious personage. This is no legal scale of certainty: it is the sequence that the Gazette attributes to Dubuis. It lent to the accusation a form far more precise than a mere void in the till.
The Gazette summarises the device imputed to Rellanger: imaginary names had served to cloak cash transactions whose receipts had been retained. The sum charged for the period spanning July 3 to November 10 mounted to 855 francs and 50 centimes. In this same affair, she confessed to owing money to Dubuis, yet sought to limit the debt to 415 francs. A single occurrence in the gazette bears the spelling “Dubois”; elsewhere, the tradesman is named Dubuis. The orthographic slip is insufficient to suggest another individual.
At the trial, the narratives assumed differing complexions: a signed bond of debt for the first place of service, a disputed verbal licence at Canord’s, and phantom names entered upon the ledger at Dubuis’s. The Gazette sets forth the masters’ accounts and Rellanger’s rejoinders, yet it withholds the grounds of the jury’s deliberations. It deemed her explanations impossible to credit; this assessment remained that of the gazetteer, entirely distinct from the verdict the jurors were to return.
The bench was presided over by M. de Bastard. The Advocate-General Sallé addressed the court for the prosecution; Maître de Froidefond des Farges appeared for the defence. The journal relates that the president, the public prosecutor, and counsel himself all urged her to make a full confession, and that she remained obdurate against these entreaties. Having rehearsed the opposing testimony and the defence’s plea, the Gazette insists upon the prisoner’s antecedents and her refusal to confess; this framing shapes the judgment that followed.
The jury returned a verdict of guilty without extenuating circumstances; the court sentenced her to five years of solitary confinement. With this decree, the chronicle closes. It records the judicial terminus, but reveals neither the specific interrogatories laid before the jury nor the ultimate fate of Rellanger. The tallies themselves remain those that the masters put forward and that the prisoner disputed: reimbursements, rebates, and contested credits never received a single, definitive accounting. The sentence is certain upon the printed leaf; the true path of the missing francs remains forever locked within those ledgers which the chronicle never transcribed.