To bring a court hearing to a standstill, it is enough that a man refuse his name. On June 22, 1819, before the Court of Assizes, the principal accused would still not consent to being called Pierre Coignard. He presented himself as Pontis, Count de Sainte-Hélène, lieutenant-colonel. The law had already ruled otherwise; it possessed an official decree, and he held fast to an answer. The presiding judge would eventually reach an accommodation: he would address him as the "first accused." In this manner, the trial could proceed without wresting this initial concession from the man upon the bench.
A year earlier, this very question had occupied several sittings. Before inquiring into what this officer had done, it was necessary to determine who he was. Documents spoke for the count; witnesses spoke for the convict. Nor did the difficulty merely lie in discovering, beneath a uniform, an individual who would never have known how to bear it. The man who had held command had truly served. Military men praised his valour and his competence. His conduct with the armies afforded him a defense far more formidable than any aristocratic particle: men of honor had found satisfaction in him.
The life that the prosecution dragged back to the surface began in Langeais, in the household of a vine-grower. Pierre Coignard had been destined for the trade of a hatter; subsequently, he had taken up arms. A conviction for theft had sent him to the galleys for fourteen years. Having escaped from Toulon in 1805, according to the court proceedings, he had made his way to Spain. There opened that second existence which, to the defense, was the only true one: military services, advancements in rank, and a return to France. Under the name of Pontis, the fugitive had become a field officer.
Yet it remained necessary to provide the count with kin. This was an affair far more delicate than a uniform. In those years of warfare and displacement, absentees were hardly lacking; yet the parish registers could well demand explanations. In Saint-Pierre-Duchemin, a mayor received letters intended to unearth a baptismal record. As no such entry existed, the correspondent suggested substituting it with eyewitness testimonies and promised certain favors. When confronted with these letters, the accused admitted having written them. They concerned, he then explained, his brother.
Soissons furnished another expedient: registers destroyed by fire, and the memory of a child born in an inn. An instrument of notoriety, executed before a notary, lent administrative form to this birth. The officer now held that which his counsel could produce in open court: a regular legal title, corroborated by signatures. The prosecution maintained that these attestations had been procured through deception. Yet the document had circulated, opened doors, and found its way into official ledgers. The very sheet of paper intended to prove an estate would later become a piece of evidence for the prosecution.
In the world wherein he had established himself, Pontis also encountered useful names. The wife of Prévost, formerly a division head at the Ministry of War, was born a Pontis: he presented himself as a relative. Prévost subsequently recounted this intimacy thus won, the family explanations, the social calls. At his side appeared Rosa Marcen, a Spanish woman whom he introduced as his wife. Titles of nobility thus passed from parchment to polite conversation, and thence to social acceptance. One did not demand a birth certificate every morning from a cousin received the previous evening.
It was precisely another sort of acquaintance that shattered this tranquility. A former convict recognized the officer during a military review and notified the police. Following an initial arrest, the man escaped once more. In May 1818, he fell back into the hands of the authorities. The trial concerning his identity commenced on July 2. Not all the witnesses recognized him. Certain recollections were wavering; a former clerk from the penal hulks even ascribed to him the Christian name of Alexandre. For Dupin the younger, entrusted with his defense, these hesitations weighed as heavily as the assertions of those who claimed certainty.
A spectator named Viguier came forward to furnish acquaintance of another variety. He had lodged Coignard; the latter had stood as godfather to his daughter and still owed him money. Viguier’s wife confirmed the identification at the following session. The accused requested that the signatures, the personal descriptions, and even the state of his teeth be inspected. He would not permit these memories to harmonize without subjecting them to scrutiny. His counsel likewise contested the methods of the police: prior to the hearing, Vidocq had conducted Madame Viguier to the prison for a confrontation which the defense denounced as irregular.
The defense went as far as Spain to find witnesses capable of overturning the entire chronology. If the count had served there while Coignard was in irons, the two men could not be one and the same. A clergyman believed he had seen him there, but could not furnish the decisive date; another witness had known him only since 1812. These encounters confirmed a presence in the Peninsula without establishing the impossibility sought by the defense. The accused reminded the witnesses of specific houses, acquaintances, and conversations. He required more than mere individuals who remembered him: he required recollections sufficiently distant in time to serve as an alibi. The court granted delays to the defense; the hearings dragged on from the 2nd to the 10th, and then to the 20th of July.
Was the flesh to decide where faces deceived? Dupin produced a physical description of the convict and contrasted his stature, his marks, and his scars with those of his client. He petitioned for an examination by a medical expert. The prosecution replied notably with other descriptions, which were themselves contradictory: their imperfection, it argued, precluded drawing the hoped-for proof. An intercepted letter further encumbered the defense. Addressed to Alexandre Coignard, it indicated the testimonies to be procured in order to place the accused in Spain prior to his escape. He maintained that he had sought only to bring out the truth.
On July 20, 1818, his identity was formally established. The former judgment was to be executed; the new offenses would form the subject of a separate judicial inquiry. The count protested. Eleven months later, when he reappeared with seven co-defendants, that protest remained whole. Yet the nature of the debate had altered. It was no longer sufficient to demonstrate the return of a convict under an illustrious name: it was necessary to prove forgeries and thefts, to distinguish the acts of each party, and to trace the goods and depositions to their lawful conclusions.
A bracelet then offered a convergence far less disputable than that of two competing memories. Mademoiselle Lefebvre produced the portion she still possessed; the clasp fitted precisely into the other part exhibited among the material evidence. Judges and jurors verified the fact. Other personal effects were identified, notably by the Spanish general Marty. Coignard invoked a seller named Rodrigo, whom he could not produce in court. His advocate, Millot, recalled that possessing a stolen article did not suffice, in and of itself, to prove that one had committed the theft. The defense contested every step that the prosecution intended to clear in a single stride.
Even the most confident narratives of the preliminary inquiry sometimes lost their distinctness. Sergent de Champigny appeared less affirmative regarding the objects he had initially recognized. The public prosecutor abandoned the charge relating to the burglary of his dwelling. The gunshots fired during the arrest likewise gave rise to dispute: Coignard maintained that he had only returned fire; the officer wounded in the hand had not appeared to testify. The prosecutor left the charge of attempted willful homicide to the jury, deeming it insufficiently established. A man might well have usurped a name without every subsequent accusation turning true for that sole reason.
Rosa Marcen, for her part, possessed her own defense. Could her visits to General Marty truly be considered preparations for a theft? She offered a different explanation. Dupin, who now represented her, argued that she was ignorant of the provenance of the jewels she had received and remained a stranger to the enterprises of her companion. On June 26, after five days of proceedings, the jury acquitted her. Laurence Laurent, Lenormand, Soffiet, and Carette were likewise acquitted. Pierre Coignard was found guilty of forgery and several counts of theft, but not of attempted willful homicide. Lexcellent received five years' imprisonment. Alexandre Coignard, found guilty of attempted theft accompanied by violence, was condemned, like Pierre, to hard labor for life.
For Rosa, Carette, and Soffiet, however, acquittal did not instantly open the prison gates. A fresh prosecution concerned the passport procured for Coignard during his flight. On July 17, the correctional tribunal declared that it was not proved they had acted knowingly, and ordered their release. There remained the appeal of the two brothers: on July 31, their condemnation was upheld. Coignard had striven to save his name up to the moment when he had to save his liberty. The court had denied him both. Yet the individuals who walked free from these trials carried away a determination no less precise: having lived in the orbit of the purported count did not suffice to make one share in his punishment.