Étienne Aubry had served as shepherd to farmer Benoît for five years, and until then his master had found no cause for reproach. Aubry was himself a married man; the chronicler dates his liaison with Élise to eighteen months prior, noting that his frequenting of taverns had already begun well before that fateful Saturday in May. On May 2, 1829, Élise Charles’s refusal to spend the night with him in his hut preceded an excursion to the tavern, where Aubry drank four bottles of white wine and a measure of eau-de-vie with his companions. Returning to the flock, he neglected his charge and allowed his sheep to mingle with those of the neighbors. Benoît came upon the scene and addressed him with mild reproaches. The matter might have rested there. It took a darker turn when the shepherd rose from his hut and pointed toward his master’s farmstead, speaking of two eyes that were working his ruin. Benoît understood that he referred to Élise, who was likewise in his domestic employ, and replied that he would dismiss them both if they conducted themselves ill.
Aubry thereupon seized the bridle of Benoît’s mount and drew a two-bladed knife from his pocket. The master dismounted, attempted to pacify him, and accepted the weapon which Aubry handed over as proof that he intended no harm. Benoît took a few paces. The shepherd demanded his knife back; Benoît refused. Aubry then took up a pruning hook and threatened him. The husbandman seized his arms from behind and was wounded in the hand during the struggle. Two carters came running to the spot. Aubry uttered threats against each of them, yet their presence gave him pause. Turning away from Benoît, he mounted the horse and galloped off toward the farmstead, declaring that although he had failed to kill his master, his master’s wife would no longer be alive by the time he returned home.
The distance between the field and the house became a desperate race. Benoît could not pursue on foot. One carter hastened ahead, but Aubry caught sight of him and, with menaces, forced him to turn back. The shepherd stopped by the dwelling of his own wife, where he seized another knife. Hands reached out to restrain him. Declaring that he was going to die for his country, he set off once more toward the farm.
Champagnac’s account assigns no invented origin to this threat; rather, it traces its repercussions as they passed from one soul to another. Hortense Lemaire was crossing the road with a horse when word reached her of the peril hanging over Madame Benoît. She offered her mount. A servant departed without delay, arrived almost at the same instant as Aubry, and succeeded in warning the gardener. When Aubry demanded to know where Élise was, the gardener pointed toward the far end of the garden. While the shepherd rushed in that direction, the doors of the main house were bolted shut.
Benoît and other farmhands arrived in their turn. One of them set out to fetch the gendarmerie. Aubry gave chase, yet could not overtake him. He then turned upon the horses left loose in the open fields. He struck seven of them, dealing eight blows according to the chronicler. This fury took no human life among those he sought; it made beasts the victims of his passage. The news of what he had done reached the farmstead before anyone could comprehend where the danger truly lay.
Courteau, the oldest of the farmhands, stepped outside to attend to his duties. He encountered Aubry, who asked where he was bound. “To fetch the horses,” the old man replied. Aubry informed him that it was too late for that, and that he would settle his account as well. Courteau spoke to him, offered gentle admonitions, and walked alongside him for a time. The shepherd seemed to calm down. Then a rebuke slipped into the counsel. Aubry asked if he had truly been in the wrong. Courteau answered that he was a good lad at heart, but that he had indeed been in the wrong. Aubry bade him farewell and struck him above the left breast. Courteau had only time enough to utter his astonishment; then he fell.
Aubry moved away and crossed paths with the rural constable. He directed him toward Courteau, and night fell over the fields. The search conducted that evening failed to apprehend him. The following morning, he appeared once more before the gardener and reproached him for having deceived him: Élise had not been in the garden. Had she been there, he added, her fate would have been sealed, as his own was now sealed. Two men who had come to inspect the pasture where the wounded horses lay discovered him. At the sound of the village bells, Aubry inquired whether they were tolling for Courteau; seized with dread, the men made no reply. He added that he already knew the truth, then announced that he would be in his hut within three quarters of an hour and that they might come to arrest him. A gendarme duly proceeded thither.
Upon the officer’s arrival, Aubry cast off his jacket and waistcoat, inflicted three stab wounds upon his own chest, and collapsed, declaring that he was a dead man. The gendarme replied that he was still speaking. Wounded and disarmed, Aubry allowed himself to be led away. He explained that his strength had failed him before he could finish taking his own life, and that he had required three more victims: Benoît, Élise, and then himself. Along the road, he pointed out to the gendarme the spot where he had sought to murder Courteau, repeating that the old man had soothed his anger before telling him once more that he had been in the wrong.
The facts laid before the Assize Court of the Oise at Beauvais on June 20, 1829, comprised two distinct counts: the attempted murder of Benoît and the willful murder of Courteau. The proceedings did not limit themselves to the initial altercation. The carters, the gardener, the domestics, Hortense Lemaire, the rural constable, and the gendarme had each, at different junctures, encountered the onward rush of peril or helped to arrest its course. Madame Benoît, singled out in Aubry’s spoken threat, had been shielded from him by bolted doors and a timely alarm. Élise had eluded his search entirely. Courteau, however, had walked alongside the very man he sought to pacify.
In the courtroom, Aubry followed the pleadings with close attention. Whenever witnesses spoke in low tones, he craned his neck to catch their words. Élise Charles testified to the threats at knifepoint he had previously leveled against her. Aubry gazed upon her throughout her deposition, reproaching her for having plunged him into ruin. These words in no way altered her standing in the proceedings: she appeared strictly as a witness, and not as an instigator of the shepherd’s violence. Champagnac, for his part, heaps insults upon her outward appearance, describing her as the innocent cause of these crimes. Such judgment belongs solely to the chronicler, not to the facts established against Aubry.
The defense counsel endeavored to present these acts as seizures of madness. This argument was laid before the jury, yet it did not supersede the two formal questions regarding the acts of violence. To both, the jurors returned an affirmative verdict. Aubry was sentenced to penal servitude for life. The chronicle depicts him receiving the judgment without visible emotion. It records neither any subsequent return of the condemned man nor any alteration to his sentence.
Along the road, Aubry had covered the distance faster than any warning could travel. At the farmstead, the gardener grasped the peril early enough to bolt the doors. With Courteau, there had been no chase: the two men walked side by side, and the old servant’s final rebuke was answered by the blow. The scene is brief in the chronicle, yet that quiet stroll together marks the precise moment when well-meant counsel turned fatal.