At Neauphle-le-Château, a lord of the manor possessed the power to haul a mother and her daughter before the bench upon an accusation of larceny, after having harried them with suit upon suit. It required several years, sundry decrees, and an unflinching constancy of purpose for the court to command that he provide for the child born of the young woman and tender her an indemnity. The chapter of the New Pitaval that chronicles this cause is a retrospective compilation, steeped in moralising strictures and dramatic embellishments. It nonetheless sets out an exact sequence of judicial proceedings, the dates and legal consequences of which must be scrupulously disentangled from the outrages alleged.
About the year 1775, Guillaume-Jacques Germain Durel de Vidouville took up residence in a vast, secluded seat on the outskirts of Neauphle. The narrative portrays him as an opulent gentleman of title, attended by a train of domestics, whose devout presence at church and Sabbath largesse had purchased him the repute of a benefactor. He applied to the mother of fifteen-year-old Marie-Anne Marchebout, soliciting that the maiden be sent to his house to sew his linen. The mother consented, trusting that such employment was well suited to the girl’s nimble hands and that her labour would be handsomely rewarded.
The account asserts that Durel sought first to insinuate himself into Marie’s confidence, before attempting to compel her by force. It relates that she escaped his clutches on a first occasion, but that a valet persuaded her to return, making light of the encounter as a mere jest and pledging his master’s imminent departure. On the morrow, Durel, who had not departed, detained her within the house. The text characterizes this initial assault as a rape; here, one must maintain the exact nature of the record: the compilation recounts the deed, then observes that nine witnesses corroborated the greater part of the facts advanced by the family. Yet it recites neither the official transcript of these depositions nor any criminal sentence pronouncing punishment for rape.
The young girl returned repeatedly to the manor, according to the narrative, before her kin discovered her commerce with Durel. Her parents strictly forbade her ever to see the nobleman again. She nevertheless set out to join him at Versailles, where he had pledged to meet her; her father overtook her and brought her back to the hearth. On their journey home, Durel crossed their path, yet recoiled from wresting her away by force in the face of the father’s defiance. He subsequently commissioned a valet to induce her return. The design miscarried; the servant was seized by Marie’s kinsmen and confessed that he had come at the express bidding of his master.
The chronicler pursues several further episodes wherein Durel strove to regain possession of the young woman. Coming upon her during a promenade, he bore her away in a carriage with the aid of his retainers and conveyed her into Normandy. At length, he revealed to her that he was a married man; she was subsequently brought before his wife, who, according to the compiler, warned her that her husband had hunted down other maidens before her. In time, Marie discovered herself with child and sought to return to her mother’s roof. The text imputes threats and violence to Durel upon her refusal to abide with him. These details belong to the compiler’s narrative and the family’s petitions, and cannot be disentangled as authenticated findings drawn directly from an original trial minute.
In January 1776, Marie’s parents instituted proceedings to obtain her restitution. The record notes that the bailiwick of Pontchartrain issued an ordinance on the 11th of January, authorizing them to prosecute their complaint at law and provisionally recover their daughter. A bailiff escorted her back to her home. Marie left behind her the goods and the bond of annuity that Durel had settled upon her. Shortly following her return, she declared her pregnancy, and her parents lodged their formal complaint against the nobleman.
It was at this juncture that the proceedings took a perilous turn. Durel retaliated by accusing Marie and her mother of having purloined sundry effects from his house. A trooper of the Maréchaussée, who was an habitué of the manor, drew up, according to the Pitaval, an official report echoing the master’s version. The ordinary magistrate being indisposed by illness, Durel procured the appointment of an advocate from his own circle to sit in his stead. The chapter maintains that this surrogate judge directed the inquest entirely to his patron’s advantage, issuing a warrant of arrest against the Marchebouts. It provides neither the text of the warrant nor the name of the advocate; the reader is thus unable independently to verify the manner in which this decree was obtained.
Guillaume Causse, another valet, subsequently attempted to force his way into the family dwelling to convey Marie to his master. The family and their neighbours thwarted him. He admitted that he was in Durel’s service, while denying he had received any mandate to abduct the young woman. The Marchebouts brought a fresh complaint. Fifteen witnesses were examined, the compiler notes, and a new writ was issued against Durel. He evaded arrest by procuring an act of relief that permitted him to enter his defence without being cast into prison. The diverse complaints were ultimately joined, yet their entanglement renders the chronology singularly arduous to decipher today.
The family now found themselves under the shadow of a warrant in the matter of the alleged theft. Mother and daughter surrendered themselves voluntarily to the magistrates and submitted to examination. Durel, for his part, did not press the execution of the writ he had obtained. The chapter records that a decree of the 27th of March 1776 discharged them of the accusation of theft, but relegated their claim for indemnity to the principal suit. The procureur général thereupon carried the cause before the Parlement of Paris to quash an adjudication tainted, he argued, by fatal defects of form; Durel likewise lodged an appeal.
This protracted litigation did not, therefore, culminate in a criminal condemnation of the nobleman for the outrages alleged. The judgment which the chronicler places at the close of the appeals, rendered on the 19th of February 1777, directed Durel to provide for Marie’s child and to rear it in the Catholic religion, submitting a quarterly account to the King’s procurator. It further commanded him to deposit an indemnity of 6,000 livres with a notary, for the young woman’s use. The decree moreover condemned Durel and Marie each to pay three livres to the prisoners of the Conciergerie, and strictly enjoined Durel as well as his valet Guillaume Causse from committing any similar violences in the future.
The narrative appends a further decision of the 27th of May 1776 regarding the charge of larceny, which it asserts was set aside for irregularity of procedure, while recording that Marie and her mother were discharged and Durel mulcted in further damages. The dates and amounts belonging to these interlocutory rulings do not easily square with the sequence previously set forth in the chapter. They must not be confounded with the indemnity of 6,000 livres decreed in 1777. Yet this documentary obscurity does not obscure the most salient feature of the outcome: the lord was held to contribute to the child’s maintenance and to indemnify Marie; he received no criminal punishment, in the surviving record, for the outrages laid to his charge.
At the outset, the great gate of the manor had stood between the young seamstress and her kin, shutting out all immediate succour. In the years that ensued, the gate took on another meaning: parents, witnesses, and officers of the law were obliged to cross its threshold, as successive warrants alternately opened and obstructed the avenues of justice. Durel’s opulence rendered any suit perilous and its prosecution ruinously dear, as the chronicler observes. The outcome of 1777 was confined to civil obligations and an injunction against recurring outrages; yet, in the narrative of the Pitaval, that decree at least prevented the judicial trap from snapping shut upon the charge of theft brought against the mother and her daughter.