The presiding judge summarized the prisoner’s disappearance as a deliberate staging: Bouvot had ordered a repast at La Varenne-Saint-Maur, written to his employer that he was about to open his veins, and then hired a boat in which he abandoned his mechanical leg along with blood-stained linen. The skiff was cast adrift. A suicide was credited; a first order of nolle prosequi was entered. Yet several passers-by believed they caught sight of him in the Rue Laffitte. A fresh investigation was opened. In the month of March 1874, Bouvot was apprehended at Pontoise.
When he stood before the Court of Assizes of the Seine on June 29, he was still young, elegantly attired, and walked with difficulty, leaning upon a walking stick. The Gazette des Tribunaux notes that he appeared profoundly affected and shed tears. The accused declared his name as Pierre-Eugène Bouvot, born in London in 1845 of French parents, late cashier to M. Gagelin. The judicial report reduced the matter to two cardinal figures: 13,200 francs initially uncovered by the employer, and subsequently 21,938 francs according to the expert examination of the ledgers.
The bill of indictment stated that Bouvot had entered Gagelin’s service at a salary of 2,500 francs per annum. The interrogatory introduced another detail: engaged on October 15, 1871, he received, according to his own answers, 2,400 francs and board. He had remained for nearly two years. During an absence of the clerk, Gagelin had presented invoices to several clients; these replied that they had long since settled their accounts. The deficit forthwith stood revealed in the books. The gazette does not reproduce the vouchers themselves, but the divergence between the preliminary sums and the audited total was to hang over the entirety of the interrogation.
Ere addressing this deficit, the president sought to revisit the days of the Commune. Bouvot had served in the Garde Mobile, and later among the skirmishers. The prosecution depicted him as a captain upon the general staff of the Federates, wounded at Fort d’Issy. He replied that he had taken part in the Commune only from May 15 to 21 and had never performed active service. He acknowledged having been wounded, though in the Rue de Rome, and denied having fought either in the ranks of the insurgents or in those of the army of Versailles. The president reminded him that he then wore the uniform of a Commune captain and that he had undergone the amputation of a foot at the house of a witness examined during the preliminary inquiry. Bouvot agreed that he had fled Paris after the Commune. The president rebuked him for having sought an honorable explanation for his wound by claiming to have received it while combating the Federates. Bouvot conceded that this was an untruth.
The question of the monies returned to the invoices. The president observed that the clients had paid, that a defalcation of 21,934 francs had been acknowledged, and inquired of Bouvot whether he conceded having been an unfaithful servant. He answered that he did. Later, the president brought to his mind the sum of 21,000 francs. Yet at the opening of the account, the indictment set down 21,938 francs, and the expert witness confirmed this total. Gagelin, for his part, testified that he had first discovered a deficit of 10,000 to 12,000 francs. When Bouvot returned, he had apprised him of his findings; Bouvot allegedly replied that he was a ruined man, that further search was pointless, and that the missing sum amounted to 13,000 francs.
Bouvot recounted how the first misappropriation had occurred. He had abstracted 300 francs from his master’s strongbox to satisfy a creditor who threatened to denounce his participation in the Commune. That first step once taken, he said, he suffered himself to be drawn into further embezzlements. He pleaded the necessities of his household and his four children, as well as the establishment of his wife in a florist’s shop. She had long been his mistress before becoming his lawful spouse. The report gives no itemized account of these successive withdrawals; it records instead the explanation Bouvot tendered to the bench: those initial transgressions had carried him further than he had ever intended.
The inquiry was resumed after witnesses believed they had recognized Bouvot in Paris. A second preliminary investigation was opened, followed by a third; the newspaper does not supply the dates of each stage. It merely records that Bouvot was arrested at Pontoise in March 1874.
At the hearing, Bouvot confessed his fault. He explained that he had besought Gagelin to let him depart for the house of his grandfather, eighty-seven years of age, who might have provided 10,000 francs to repair at least part of the injury. At the eleventh hour, his courage failed him, and he could not bring himself to make a full confession to the old man. He had returned to his master’s premises and surrendered himself. Gagelin confirmed that the clerk had spoken of 13,000 francs and of the grandfather, adding, upon a question from the president, that Bouvot had not returned twice to place himself at his disposal. The journal thus sets down the words of the master and those of the prisoner without blending them into a single narrative.
The name under which Bouvot had lived throughout his flight was that of his mother. He admitted to having worked under this alias. The president observed that he had also alleged a change of name because a brother had brought dishonor upon his family. Questioned again upon the motive for the embezzlements, he returned to his initial theft of 300 francs and the creditor who was blackmailing him. He added that he had allowed himself to drift, felt profound repentance, and had asked pardon of all. The Gazette notes that he wept. The president observed that his regrets came late and characterized the offense as grave.
Gagelin, then seventy-six years of age, gave his testimony next. He had engaged Bouvot upon favorable recommendations and declared himself well satisfied with his industry; he had reposed in him, he said, absolute trust. His deposition confirmed that the discovery of the deficit had shattered that trust and prompted him to lodge a formal complaint.
The president likewise ordered the reading of two depositions taken from the prisoner’s wife during the instruction. In the first, she stated that she had been married only since November and complained of her husband’s brutality. On September 14, 1873, she recounted, he had urgently demanded 400 or 500 francs for the following day, refusing to impart the reason. She offered him her jewels and the right to collect her outstanding bills, which she estimated at 550 francs. He took the jewels and the bills, went out, and she saw him no more. On the morrow, she received a letter postmarked from Paris, in which he confessed to an error and announced that he must go into exile.
In her second deposition, sworn after October 30, she stated that she had received no further tidings of her husband. The police had informed her of his suicide and delivered to her a mechanical leg, which she recognized as one of two in his possession. She explained that she did not wear mourning for lack of means. Regarding his injury, she stated that he had been wounded in the insurgent ranks on March 21, 1871; at the bar, the president and Bouvot had both spoken of May 21. She also reported eight days passed upon Dombrowski’s staff, an enlistment among the Algerian skirmishers during the siege, and a military medal her husband had brought home one day; she had never seen the warrant. The Gazette records these statements as the wife’s own words, leaving the contradiction unresolved.
Advocate General Fourchy maintained the prosecution without opposing the plea of extenuating circumstances. Maître Octave Falateuf presented the defense. The jury answered affirmatively to the question of guilt and admitted extenuating circumstances. The court sentenced Bouvot to four years’ imprisonment. The press account makes no mention of the jury’s particular reasons. It leaves confronting one another an admission of guilt, ledgers whose totals were settled by professional audit, an escape contrived around a feigned suicide, and two irreconcilable versions of Bouvot’s life prior to his arrest.