It was near eleven o'clock at night when the younger Dauba arrived at the home of a clogmaker. He announced that his father had likely been murdered, then asked that the time of his visit be altered: should anyone come questioning, it must be said that he had called between six and seven o'clock. He promised a recompense in return. This request, preserved in the records of the case, already contained two divergent narratives. In the one, a son had just learned of a calamity. In the other, he needed to have been elsewhere at the very moment that calamity transpired.
Jean Dauba the elder held two estates in the commune of Lugant, in the Landes. He dwelt at Poncheton with his son, his daughter-in-law, and their children. The estate of Bacqué, situated about a quarter of a league distant, was tenanted by one Jeanne Halibert. The elder Dauba repaired thither frequently, worked the land, and occasionally passed the night. The son reproached his father for what he regarded as a diversion of the household’s substance toward this woman. The chronicle hints at an illicit liaison; above all, it records a domestic feud centered upon worldly goods, the violent outbursts of which were known to several neighbors.
The family patrimony had already dwindled. Legal proceedings had incurred heavy costs and compelled the sale of sundry parcels; a further alienation was being contemplated. The son professed to fear outright destitution for his children. This grievance must be viewed precisely for what it was: the explanation he offered for his wrath, not a lawful title over his father’s life. In a household where several generations shared the daily toil and the daily bread, the old man’s title and the expectations of the younger generation occupied the very same ground without belonging to the same hands. The distance between the two estates was quickly traversed; the rancors it held apart returned anew each evening.
On December 15, 1826, as he was returning home, the father was struck in the head by a gunshot. He survived. His formal complaint came to nothing, according to the chronicle, but the assault was laid to the charge of a man named Fiton, known by the sobriquet of Courroc. This imputation was by no means a judicial conviction. It would nonetheless take its place, some weeks later, among the circumstances that led to his apprehension. An initial, unresolved act of violence had left a convenient name behind in the village—a suspicion that the second attack was bound to reawaken.
Another incident was subsequently recounted. The small russet dog that accompanied Dauba began to bark before a thicket, then displayed signs of familiar recognition. The father allegedly discovered his son concealed therein and rebuked him for lying in wait. Witnesses later reported remarks in which the young man admitted to this prowling and threatened to return. We possess no independent observation of the entire scene: it reaches us solely through the confidences of the father and the words attributed to the son. During the preliminary examination, it was destined to bear heavily upon the crucial question of premeditation, beyond the act ultimately acknowledged.
On the evening of January 31, 1827, Garrabos and Lespez heard the discharge of a firearm. From their dwellings, they presently caught the sound of cries, barking, and noises they interpreted as blows being struck. They recognized the voice of old Dauba. Then silence fell once more. They made their way toward his house, where neither father nor son was to be found. Their senses provided an approximate hour and place, as well as the certainty of an assault; they had not, however, revealed to them the men who dealt the blows. That limitation does not vanish merely because the reported sounds were frightful.
On the following day, the dog went back and forth between Bacqué and the spot where his master lay. The body was discovered in the afternoon, beside the path Dauba was accustomed to take on his journey home. It had been dragged into a ditch containing water. The marks upon the ground and the nature of the wounds bore witness to a protracted struggle. The chronicle dwells at great length upon the son's demeanor: his reluctance to approach, his refusal to apprise the mayor himself, and the slumber that reportedly overtook him during the wake beside the corpse. Such conduct fed the suspicions of the neighborhood; the magistrates, however, would require far more substantial elements to pass from an unfavorable impression to criminal culpability.
Dauba the younger was arrested, as was Fiton. He at first denied everything, then requested an audience with the public prosecutor and the examining magistrate. To them he made a detailed statement in which he admitted having taken part in his father's death, while vehemently denying all premeditation. The chronicle reproduces this confession under a discordant date, speaking of December 31, whereas the preceding occurrences firmly place the homicide on January 31. We retain the date of the event within its general chronology, without arbitrarily amending the language of the source document or pretending that this clerical discrepancy does not exist.
According to this deposition, the son had encountered upon the road a man named Duluc, armed with a fowling piece and resolved to kill the father. He maintained that he had had no part in this initial design. The weapon was fired, whereupon the father reportedly threw himself upon him; Duluc was said to have struck with his gun, and he himself with a pitchfork. The two men then allegedly moved the body. The son added that he had concealed the pitchfork within the thatched roof of a cabin, where it was duly recovered. His confession established his own participation according to his own admissions; it likewise accused another man, whose criminal responsibility remained to be demonstrated independently.
Duluc was apprehended and confronted with him. Dauba adhered to his narrative, adding that an earlier proposal had already been made to rid him of his father in exchange for six hundred francs. The chronicle regards this complicity as plausible, citing the sheer physical vigor of the deceased. Such reasoning, however, supplies neither an eyewitness to the second assailant nor any evidence establishing his identity. A man who confesses may well speak truly concerning his own acts while failing to be believed concerning those he attributes to others. The trial was destined precisely to compel the jurors to sever what the prosecution presented as a whole.
Forty witnesses were heard over the course of four days. Dauba reiterated his confession, disputing all alleged threats or overt steps likely to establish premeditation. The public prosecutor pressed the charge vigorously against Duluc and with less vehemence against Fiton. Dauba’s advocate, Maître Laurence, made no attempt to dispute the admitted participation. He urged the court to consider the prisoner’s upbringing and the domestic examples set before him in his family. Champagnac recounts this plea in the harsh social idiom of his era; it is not our office to turn rural ignorance into an indisputable explanation for murder, nor to hold the father responsible for his own destruction.
The jury returned an affirmative verdict as to the guilt of Dauba, and a negative one regarding the two co-accused, who were immediately set at liberty. It is imperative not to conclude the narrative with a scene depicting Duluc as a murderer: the son’s accusation was deemed insufficient to secure his conviction. When asked what he had to say before sentence was passed, Dauba implored mercy for his four children, whom their mother would be unable to sustain. That very apprehension for their future which he had formerly urged against his father’s expenditures returned, on this occasion, before the judges of the court.
The chronicle records that he heard his sentence read, but does not specify the precise penalty here, nor does it recount any execution. The record must halt at this threshold. A father was dead, a son convicted, two men acquitted; the prisoner’s own words had served to ruin him without securing the condemnation of those he had implicated. As for the hour he had sought to borrow from the clogger, it recalls the initial point of departure of the entire inquiry: when a man asks to be placed several hours earlier inside a house, it is no longer merely his presence that must be verified, but whatever it was he hoped to efface between the two hours.