The grave had been dug in advance, said the complainants. They were to be slaughtered, then interred in the cellar. This circumstance lent the quarrel a terrible completeness: the proprietor, it seemed, had not merely struck down his visitors, but had contrived their utter disappearance. Yet when the Bagarris brothers were called upon to answer for this detail, they retracted the assertion. They had signed, they explained, without having the faculties to comprehend what was placed before them. In an affair born of ill-drafted covenants, signatures were destined to cause no small embarrassment.
An Estate in Several Hands
Joseph Magagnos had returned from the United States with two vessels laden with colonial wares. His homecoming had begun unpropitiously. Defrauded in his mercantile ventures, he had contemplated departing once more with his family, accompanied by his friend Jean-Baptiste Audry. The apprehension of a rupture between Great Britain and the United States thwarted this design. He thereupon established himself for a season at Toulon, beside his mother. To a man whom commerce had disappointed, the sojourn might have appeared a tranquil interlude; yet a new entanglement awaited him there.
Aboard a diligence bound for Marseilles, he made the acquaintance of Blanquet, the proprietor in Toulon of the Jardin du Roi. Trust was established swiftly enough to pass from mere discourse to the advancement of funds. Magagnos advanced first fifteen hundred francs, then twelve thousand, without demanding an immediate promissory note. He was subsequently obliged to obtain, not without difficulty, the instrument that ought to have preceded the delivery of the monies. A mortgage upon the property eventually secured his claim. The personal tie had produced a debt; the debt henceforth bound the lender to the real estate.
Pursued by his creditors, Blanquet was compelled to see the garden auctioned. Magagnos and Audry became its adjudicatees for the sum of forty-six thousand francs. The situation appeared to simplify itself: he who had stood to lose his capital was now master of the ground. Yet Audry, who had disbursed but fifteen thousand francs on account of his moiety, died shortly thereafter in Marseilles. His heirs and Magagnos could not arrive at an accord. The survivor had purchased an estate with a friend; he now found himself encumbered by the entanglements of an estate in probate.
The heirs assigned their portion to two former priests, the Bagarris brothers. These men sought out Magagnos and proposed to purchase his share as well. He demanded the twenty-three thousand francs it had cost him. They countered that the heirs' portion had been sold to them for fifteen thousand. They were disputing over the selfsame ground, yet each affixed to it the valuation that suited his own posture. Magagnos then proposed the reverse transaction: since they deemed his portion too dear, he would buy out theirs.
A Thousand Francs, Then a Thousand Écus
The Bagarris brothers initially demanded, by way of supplement, the implements of an eau-de-vie distillery established on the premises. Magagnos refused. They returned to the notion of a profit of one thousand francs, payable on the instant. He tendered the sum, and the three men repaired to a notary. They did not emerge from the chambers any more proprietors than when they entered. According to Champagnac’s account, published in 1833, the defective form of the title held by the Bagarris prevented the execution of the intended public deed. The conveyance was obliged to wait; the thousand francs, however, had already changed pockets.
Magagnos demanded their restitution. His interlocutors replied at first that he had nothing to fear and that the contract would shortly be concluded. He insisted after some days and recovered his money. In the interim, the Bagarris obtained from the Audry heirs an authentic instrument establishing their acquisition. This measure might have permitted the negotiation to resume its ordinary course. Instead, it revealed that the three men no longer shared the same recollection of their bargain.
On the sixteenth of October 1808, the two brothers returned to the Jardin du Roi. Magagnos proposed to conclude the matter upon the agreed terms: sixteen thousand francs, being one thousand of profit for them. They now demanded one thousand écus. The disparity had ceased to be a mere difficulty of drafting; it touched upon their pledged word. The conversation grew venomous. Magagnos ordered them from the premises. The Bagarris retorted that they were in their own home and demanded the keys to enter at their pleasure. He required that their titles be formally served upon him first.
Blows with walking-sticks were exchanged. The Bagarris departed bruised and bleeding, leaving crimson trails in their wake. The retrospective narrative depicts them as the aggressors, yet the two men were about to lay an entirely different scene before the authorities. Magagnos, for his part, wrote to the magistrate of public safety to explain that he had repelled force with force. A dispute upon undivided property had become a race between two competing narratives. The first to reach a magistrate did not thereby become the truth; it could, nonetheless, determine the first stroke of authority.
The Brother Who Was Not There
At daybreak on the morrow, Magagnos was arrested under his own roof. The Bagarris were not merely denouncing acts of violence: they maintained that they had been lured into an ambuscade to be assassinated, with the assistance of André, Joseph’s brother. They further asserted that they had been coerced into subscribing a bond of three thousand francs. Then, in a supplementary deposition, came the tale of the grave. The demand for the keys, the altercation, and the blows vanished behind a consummate machination, wherein the very earth had been opened to await the victims.
André initially eluded the grasp of justice. Joseph appeared alone. Yet a painter brought to bear upon André’s movements an account far less sensational than that of the cellar: he had arrived at his residence at half past two on the day in question, and had not departed until half past five. André had not quitted his house during the entire visit. For the charge of complicity, these hours proved decisive. One might view a fugitive with suspicion; yet heed was due to the witness who placed him elsewhere.
The promissory bonds presented another obstacle. According to witnesses, the Bagarris had stated that their adversaries had attempted to make them sign commitments. In their formal complaint, these commitments had been transformed into obligations actually executed. Between a demand and an executed signature lay the vast expanse of a fact requiring proof. As for the grave, the complainants recanted: suffering from their wounds, they pleaded that they had signed the statement mentioning it on trust. What they had asked the magistrates to believe had thus outstripped what they were now prepared to maintain.
A Friend in Lieu of Bail
Maître de Gastaud caused these contradictions to stand forth in stark relief. At his side stood Alby, a merchant of Marseilles and a devoted friend of the accused. Upon the very arrest, he had offered bail of one hundred thousand francs to obtain provisional liberty. The application was rejected. He thereupon abandoned his affairs to take his place in the defence. Champagnac underscores his talent and his sensibility, painting him as the noble figure of these assizes. If his fortune had been powerless to unbolt the prison doors, his presence now helped to dissect the words that had consigned Magagnos within them.
On the twenty-fifth of April 1809, the Criminal Court of Draguignan pronounced the acquittal of Joseph, upon the verdict of the jury. The procureur général entered an appeal; the acquittal stood firm. André subsequently surrendered himself as a prisoner and was acquitted in his turn. He later obtained a judgement condemning the Bagarris to pay him three thousand francs in damages. The sum was reminiscent of the bond of which they had accused the two brothers: this time, however, the instrument had an indisputable author—Justice itself.
The chronicler affirms that in Draguignan, the name of Alby became a proverb for friendship in adversity. This renown belongs to the memory that his book chose to bequeath. The decree itself left behind something far more precise: the wounds of the Bagarris were real, but their blood had not sufficed to make true the whole of their deposition. Magagnos had been forced to defend separately his estate, his account of the affray, and his liberty. To deliver him from his cell, it had been necessary to return from grandiloquent accusations to modest disparities: an hour, a verb, a signature.