The box bore the address of Benoît of Lyons. It had passed through the hands of his brother Étienne, accompanied by a letter requesting that it be forwarded unopened. When Benoît lifted the lid, the explosion filled the room with smoke and left him grievously wounded. Étienne hastened to the scene, produced the note, and bitterly reproached himself for having had the parcel delivered. Soon, he would be reproached with far more. The brother who had received the box would become the accused; the one it had nearly killed would rise to his defense.
Before the outrage, there had been family reckonings. Their father, Claude-Henri of Lyons, was a merchant in the city. In 1752, he had sought to turn over his enterprise to his eldest son, Benoît, on the occasion of a marriage the young man had not desired. The match promised to unite an establishment, a fortune, and a household. Benoît loved elsewhere; his father kept his eye upon the terms of the contract. Twenty thousand livres were to fall to the son, together with the prospect of succeeding to the trade. None of this unfolded as planned.
The father was obliged to carry on his business. In lieu of promptly paying over the promised sum, he employed his daughter-in-law's dowry to meet the necessities of his own affairs. The marriage soon dissolved. The dowry was returned, and Benoît received his portion in merchandise; this he squandered, ran into debt, and subsequently departed for Turin. As arrangements shifted, the sums retained an obstinate existence within the family. What had been promised, given, reclaimed, or advanced was never wholly erased. Each could tally differently what the other had received.
Throughout this trying period, Étienne sustained his elder brother. He wrote to him, lent him funds, and helped him subsist in Piedmont. When Benoît returned to Lyons towards the close of 1758, his father refused to receive him. The younger brother took him in, attempted a reconciliation, and then secured him a haven at Saint-Chamond, among his wife's kin, when the creditors caught wind of his presence. He negotiated with them. Stays of execution were obtained, and an accord ultimately enabled Benoît to resume business under his own name.
Étienne had thus restored to Benoît something profoundly tangible: the capacity to sign his name, to trade, to show his face without instantly seeking where to hide. The sums negotiated with the creditors were not merely a column of figures. They determined the standing a man might regain in his city. To a brother who had tasted wandering, such relief meant far more than a passing favor. It lent to the memory of their accord a depth that subsequent quarrels had not entirely destroyed.
One must not imagine two brothers who had forever been foes. The one had acted as intermediary, lender, and protector to the other. This past would render the accusation all the more agonizing, and provide Benoît with reason to contest it. Yet it did not avert their strife. Toward the close of 1762, the father consented to see his eldest son once more and prepared an advance partition of his estate. He sought in particular to aid Étienne’s enterprises. Benoît considered himself wronged. Disputes ensued, followed by threats; they came near to fighting a duel.
Friends intervened. Arbitrators drew up a compromise. On June 23, 1763, Benoît left for the countryside with the man with whom he lodged, having agreed that the compact would be signed upon his return. This departure had none of the marks of an absolute rupture: a date had been set to put the brothers' affairs in order. During his absence, an unknown youth in a gray coat called repeatedly inquiring after him. He then presented himself at Étienne’s door, bearing the box and the letter.
Étienne, who was setting out on business, took charge of this strange dispatch. His brother’s address appeared upon the wood; the message merely requested that he forward it. According to the account he gave, he took it for a jest among companions. The stranger declined to carry the parcel to its recipient himself and took his leave in haste. Étienne then sought out a messenger. The box was ultimately delivered to Benoît’s lodgings. That transit was to become paramount: every hand that had held it, seen it, or offered it might bring the accusation closer to a name.
Upon his return, Benoît wished to discover what had been sent him. He set about opening the parcel near a window, assisted by a lad. The detonation wounded them both; the others present fled. It was no idle jest. The package had been fashioned to explode upon opening. Amid the confusion, Étienne appeared, producing the letter that explained how the object had reached his hands. His grief and self-reproach were not at first construed as the confession of a crime.
Initial suspicions fell upon an actress with whom Benoît had lived. Apprehended and interrogated, she asserted that his enemies were to be found within his own family, pointing directly to his brother. The recent quarrel lent weight to her words. Étienne was arrested in his turn. A young girl declared she recognized him as the man who had engaged her to transport the box. Handwriting experts rendered an opinion adverse to him. The note he had produced to exonerate himself now entered the dossier among the instruments of his indictment.
The sénéchaussée of Lyons condemned him to death for an attempt upon his brother's life. The tale of a generous man turned envious could seduce as readily as its converse: that of a benefactor brother accused after innocently delivering a parcel. Benoît did not choose to let the magistrates speak in his name. He caused a printed brief to be published in Étienne’s defense. The victim thus re-entered the proceedings with a voice the prosecution could not merely annex. He had been wounded; he refused that his wound should serve to justify the destruction of his younger brother.
His memorial contested whatever interest Étienne might have had in his death. It suggested, moreover, another avenue: a rivalry between manufacturers. The younger brother had established a manufactory and employed a chemist whose knowledge was much sought after. A competitor established in Savoy was said to have attempted to lure away this artisan, who had departed and subsequently returned. Benoît attributed to this adversary threats uttered against their family, pointing out his alleged presence in Lyons. It was a hypothesis of defense, sustained by particulars he urged the magistrates to examine; it was not the legal conviction of another perpetrator.
The appeal was carried before the Parlement of Paris. Étienne underwent the question ordinary and extraordinary without confessing. On January 12, 1765, the court condemned him to the galleys for life, following corporal punishment and the branding iron, as well as a fine. The capital sentence decreed at Lyons was no longer maintained; yet the accusation had by no means vanished. The defense published by Benoît had not secured his brother’s freedom. It remained upon the record as the singular voice of a victim who refused to recognize his own cause in the judicial vengeance exacted on his behalf.
The affair leaves this image without resolving it: two brothers whom money had set at odds, reunited once more by an outrage that should have severed them forever. Benoît could display his wounds; Étienne could offer only his denials, the memories of his former aid, and an alternate reading of the parcel’s journey. The elder’s memorial did not restore the younger to his standing as a merchant. But it prevented the tale from shrinking entirely into a squabble over inheritance, and into the name of a brother conveniently denounced by the first person called to account.