On the morning of 10 July 1844, the doors of the Assize Court of Auch gave way before a populace that had beleaguered them since dawn. The chronicle in Le Censeur describes overfilled benches, ladies’ galleries utterly overwhelmed, and witnesses who had to be detained in an adjoining chamber. Into the prisoners’ dock stepped Euphémie Vergès, widow Lacoste, alongside Joseph-Odilon Meilhan, an elderly schoolmaster of Riguepeu. The gathering throng had not come merely to hear a trial of arsenic: for months, village gossip had alleged that the young widow had secured her husband’s fortune after compassing his death, aided by her longstanding friend.
Henri Lacoste had taken his great-niece to wife in 1841. He possessed considerable estates in the Gers; contemporary journals estimated their value at some seven hundred thousand francs—a figure cited merely as common appraisal, not as an official probate valuation. According to the indictment reproduced in Le Censeur, a will had constituted the young woman his universal legatee. Henri was nearing seventy years of age, whereas Euphémie was in the flower of her youth. This disparity of years, the great wealth, the quarrels witnesses claimed to have overheard, and the couple’s subsequent religious solemnisation of their marriage soon offered fertile soil for local chroniclers. Yet a plausible tale is not proof.
The catastrophe occurred, according to the prosecution’s theory presented at the bar, following the Riguepeu fair in May 1843. Henri was said to have returned home indisposed, soon seized with violent pangs and vomiting. Witnesses could not even agree on the hour his distemper began, nor the number of nights the vomiting persisted, nor the patient’s condition prior to the seizure. The modern OCR transcription of Le Censeur occasionally renders impossible or corrupt dates; we retain the month of May 1843 as consistent with the general chronology of the trial, setting aside these typographical errors. The prosecution maintained that Meilhan had induced Henri to drink at the fair. Bystanders recalled phrases they imputed to him, but their memory, revived several months later, could not of itself establish what had been poured into the glass.
Henri died after an illness of several days. A first public account held his passing to be of natural causes; then rumors of foul play and poison spread through the neighbouring communes. The prosecution contended that Euphémie possessed an interest in her husband’s demise, being his sole heir, and that Meilhan had abetted her design. The suspicion of a concerted division of the spoils was fed by their familiarity and certain monetary dealings. Yet the press also reported constant friction between Henri and his household, fragile health, ruptures and chronic herpetic eruptions, as well as his ingrained habit of self-prescribing. An imputed motive thus resolved neither the true cause of death nor the hand that dealt it.
The decision to disinter the corpse transformed idle gossip into a judicial investigation. Le Censeur relates that the authorities ordered the exhumation in 1843; the precise date is illegible in the consultable OCR text, and we do not attempt to fix it. Apothecaries and physicians removed viscera, soil from the grave, and matter found adhering to the shroud; these specimens were conveyed under seal. The initial analyses conducted at Auch yielded ambiguous findings, followed by traces of arsenic. Eminent Parisian experts, among them Pelouze, Devergie, and Flandin, affirmed its presence in the liver, intestines, and muscular tissue. The surrounding soil, when assayed, revealed none. Thus, the mineral was indeed present within the remains; the question of how and when it had been introduced remained entirely unresolved.
Before the jury, science itself spoke with a divided tongue. Devergie maintained that the arsenic had been ingested during Henri’s lifetime and attributed his death to poisoning, discarding any indications of a strangulated hernia. Flandin concurred that arsenic had brought on death. Other practitioners urged greater circumspection: Dr Campardon deemed that one might reasonably conclude a fatal poisoning had occurred, yet found it impossible to pronounce it homicidal. Dr Molas suggested a concurrence of natural causes, while the various experts contested the quantity of arsenic retrieved and the conclusions it legitimately warranted. Newspaper summaries can never supply the place of full forensic depositions; yet they illustrate the central dilemma of the trial: establishing the presence of a mineral, explaining a death, and demonstrating wilful murder were three fundamentally distinct inquiries.
The defense rested upon the longstanding regimen of self-administered remedies Henri had pursued. It was alleged he had employed mercurial or arsenical frictions for his skin complaints and taken proprietary nostrums; reference was made to Fowler’s solution, a recognized arsenical preparation of the pharmacopoeia, though it could not be proven he had taken it in his final days. Euphémie declared that her husband took a whitish draught and concocted his own draughts, protesting she knew not whether they contained poison. The medical witnesses disputed the anticipated effects of a toxic dose, the symptoms observed, and the rates of cutaneous absorption from frictions. Nothing in the trial summaries permits one to affirm that self-medication accounted for the arsenic discovered; yet the possibility was laid before the jury, and weighing it demanded a sharp distinction between a medical conjecture and legal proof.
The testimony concerning the domestic life of the couple pointed in equally contradictory directions. Certain townsmen reported that Henri complained of his lot and periodically threatened to alter his will; others asserted the pair lived in perfect harmony. One witness averred that Henri had confided to him that Euphémie might one day poison him, though he subsequently admitted that these grave words belonged to a conversation purported to have occurred long before the death. Another related that the deceased had told him at the fair that Meilhan had made him drink, causing him to feel unwell. This anecdote accorded with the prosecution’s narrative, yet remained the uncorroborated recollection of words imputed to a dead man. Conversely, the physicians remained divided over the significance of the clinical signs, and those who attended the sickbed gave divergent accounts of the illness’s course.
The financial exhibits lent a certain substance to the accusation without rendering it decisive. Meilhan admitted having received 1,772 francs from Euphémie, but maintained that this sum was the mere reimbursement of monies he had previously advanced her. The existence of an annual annuity deed of four hundred francs was likewise debated; Meilhan denied its reality, and Euphémie disclaimed her signature. The Crown discerned therein the price of complicity and an illicit understanding. The advocates for the defense countered that these transactions had innocent origins and that personal animosities coloured several depositions. The transfer of funds was undeniable; its nexus with a plot to murder was not self-evident.
As the hearings drew on, considerations of honour and religion became entangled with matters of toxicology. Much was made of the wedding ceremony having been solemnised in a bedchamber—with episcopal dispensation, as shown by a letter read in open court—rather than within the parish church. The accounts record that this circumstance provoked much comment within the hall, to the degree that certain spectators judged the prisoner upon this sole detail. The presiding judge reminded the jury that every argument must be weighed solely upon its intrinsic merits, from whatever quarter it came. This incident reveals as much of the courtroom as of the press: the jurors were enjoined to examine material proofs, while the public sought in private morality a simpler verdict.
Toward the conclusion of the proceedings, both prisoners declined to add anything to their defense. The public prosecutor had demanded a conviction; the advocates contested the charges on separate grounds. The report in La Gazette des Tribunaux, dated 17 July and entitled “Hearing of 14 July,” records that the presiding judge impartially recapitulated the arguments of both parties, declaring he did so without personal bias. At half-past twelve, the jury retired. According to this journal, they returned a negative verdict on every count submitted to them, whereupon the president pronounced the decree of acquittal. Le Censeur, in its issue of 17–18 July, heads its account “Hearing of 15 July” and adds that a telegraphic dispatch had announced the acquittal of Madame Lacoste and Meilhan. The gazettes thus differ as to the precise day of the final sitting; the verdict itself, however, is confirmed by both chronicles.
Upon the rising of the court, the newspapers describe scenes of applause, knotting crowds debating upon the square, and Euphémie’s departure by carriage for Riguepeu in company with her counsel. These depictions belong to the art of the special correspondent. The legal outcome is far more measured: the jury answered none of the questions essential to convict in the affirmative. It establishes the acquittal of the two accused; it does not, of itself, disclose the origin of the arsenic, nor what truly transpired during the final days of Henri Lacoste. A poison had been discovered; physicians had debated its properties; neighbours had repeated fragments of speech; the prosecution had constructed a plausible motive. Yet between the physical fact and criminal guilt there lay an abyss that the trial failed to bridge.