The servant presented himself at the prison gates without having been sent for. His master was locked within; he wished only to join him. In an affair wherein so many imputed hidden designs to their fellows, his gesture possessed the unadorned simplicity of true devotion. The Chevalier de C..., who had hitherto borne his arrest with fortitude, wept upon beholding him. Both were henceforth caught fast in a story born ten leagues from their chateau, gathered about a murdered man who, according to common rumor, had not even been the intended victim.
The deceased was named Bérard. An abbé and chaplain to the King at the Chateau de Madrid, he had been staying for about a month with a friend settled in Cormicy, near Reims. Champagnac gives this host only the initial M. A retired officer recently arrived from Paris, he had dwelt for five months in a house situated in the center of the small town. In the night of the 21st to the 22nd of October 1768, cries for help rang out, followed by the discharge of a firearm. The neighbors rose and entered. Bérard lay in his bed, dead of wounds inflicted by an edged weapon.
Disorder was uncovered: rifled drawers, firearms, and the bloody imprint of a hand in an adjoining cabinet. A knife was perceived near the bed. The maidservant, Lévêque, explained that she had employed it on the previous evening to dress a hare. Her master acknowledged the implement as his own, lamenting that someone had taken from his sideboard the very tool turned against his friend. There were, therefore, circumstances to scrutinize, domestic habits to verify, and depositions to compare. Very swiftly, however, the narrative of an armed attack took precedence over this patient examination of the premises.
The maidservant spoke at first of two men, then of a third, bent double and laden with a burden. Yet the only missing effects discovered were several pieces of plate and a bottle of cordial. The silver was recovered some distance away. Champagnac emphasizes the incongruities of the scene: precious goods left behind, forced entries of apparent uselessness, and abandoned spoil. He perceives the possibility of an arrangement contrived to mislead. Such suspicion on the part of the chronicler does not suffice of itself to point to a murderer; it demonstrates, above all, how many questions the tale of common housebreakers left unanswered.
The town was not entirely asleep. The grape harvest kept people out of doors. The house, moreover, had its watchdogs, its heavy doors, its comings and goings. Who could have entered, lingered, and made good his escape? The initial inquest ought to have taken time to reconstruct the hours of that night. A single utterance from the master of the house supplied another direction entirely. Upon beholding the pistols, M. declared that the assailants had sought to take his own life. His friend, he claimed, had perished in his stead. The abbé was no longer the heart of the inquiry: he had become the victim of an error committed in an attempt upon another man.
This substitution altered everything. To seek the enemies of Bérard, one would have had to know his life. To seek those of M., an old quarrel lay readily to hand. The Chevalier de C..., lord of the Chateau de Grisolles, had formerly been his landlord. A lawsuit had set them at odds; M. had prevailed. Their relations had subsequently ceased. From this grievance one could easily infer a thirst for vengeance, then lend that thirst the force of a motive. Between the bed at Cormicy and the distant chateau, mere conversation now sufficed to trace a direct road.
Three men from the environs of Château-Thierry were taken into custody. They had transacted business in the neighborhood of Cormicy and were acquainted with the chevalier. They were brought into the town, exposed upon a cart, before being conveyed to Reims. The chronicle insists upon the harshness of their treatment: the irons, the cold, the populace staring upon them as though their very presence confirmed the crime. After approximately a month’s detention, an order directed that inquiries continue and set them at liberty. The investigation had failed to secure what their arrest had seemed to promise those who made a public spectacle of them.
Another detail then arose to nourish the narrative. On the morning following the murder, two travelers had crossed the Aisne upon the ferry at Œuilly. The ferrymen described one of them as hunchbacked. This description was brought together with the stooped man mentioned by the servant. An effort was then made to fit the chevalier into that silhouette. A presumed bodily peculiarity took the place of identity; a reported journey was transformed into flight. The distances, the bearings, and the destination of the wayfarers mattered less than the opportunity to bind several floating rumors together at last.
It was asserted that the chevalier’s name had been discovered upon a weapon, his coat of arms upon another, his handwriting elsewhere. The old chronicle records these rumors as common inventions circulating through the countryside, without elevating them to findings of the magistracy. A public call for witnesses served to draw all eyes toward him. As the details accumulated, the tale appeared more complete. It could now be repeated by anyone who had seen nothing, but who henceforth knew how to recount what others claimed to have learned.
The chevalier had not merely to answer an old tenant. In the narrative of his defense there appeared also kinsmen with whom opposing interests divided him. The affair afforded ancient enmities an occasion to join forces. For him, the familiar countryside was becoming overlaid with voices whose origin and reach he could no longer measure.
On June 25, 1769, the chevalier was arrested. His servant, who was absent at the time, presented himself of his own accord upon learning the news. The first three suspects were also taken into custody once more. Interrogations and confrontations began anew. The five men demanded leave to produce evidence establishing their presence elsewhere. For the chevalier, the defense maintained that he had spent the month of October at Grisolles, in the parish of Beuvardes. It was not enough to state this among friends: he demanded to be admitted to prove it before his judges.
This necessity distinguishes an active defense from mere endurance. The prisoner did not ask merely that his accusers grow weary. He required that a judicial decree answer the tales that had run wild at his expense, that a place, specific dates, and living witnesses recover their weight against the likeness of the man glimpsed upon the ferry. The servant and the three other accused had likewise a livelihood and standing to restore among their neighbors. The arrest had been public. The lifting of suspicion had to be equally manifest, lest they remain at large in a town that would continue to regard them as spared felons.
On August 12, friends came to announce to the chevalier that he was to be released. The five accused were dismissed from court—*mis hors de cour*. Yet their exculpatory proofs had not been examined as they had demanded. The chevalier departed for Paris to contest an outcome that freed his person without granting him the public reparation he sought. The chronicle follows his departure, then leaves his appeal without conclusion. It accuses his adversaries of having fed the persecution; it does not, however, supply the judicially established name of Bérard’s assassin.
Inquiries were ordered to continue concerning the murder. The dead man thus remained at the extremity of the affair, all but abandoned by the narrative that had been constructed around his bed. At Grisolles, men had regained their freedom; in Paris, a chevalier still sought a hearing for his defense. At Cormicy, there remained a chamber wherein a guest had been slain. So many words had claimed to explain his death that justice had ended by pursuing chiefly the presumed enemies of the man who had offered him a bed.