The secret of the parricide was uncovered neither by the initial examination of the body, nor by the neighbours drawn forth by the sound of cries, but by an annuity of six hundred livres. So long as the family remained united, the plunge from the window could well pass for a mishap; yet when the widow departed for Aix and the sons fell into dispute over the management of the allowance obtained from the deceased’s brother, letters began to circulate, each denouncing another member of the household. One among them, penned to lay bare the crime, was delivered through inadvertence to Chancellor Pontchartrain; it reached the King, and the order to seize the culprits was presently issued.
François D de S, sprung from an ancient house of Languedoc, had served as captain of the royal galley La Réale. At forty years of age he wedded Anne de S***, then aged eighteen, whose parents were established in Marseille. According to Champagnac, the disparity in their ages and temperaments rendered the match unhappy. Eleven children issued from the marriage; five sons and two daughters, who took the veil, survived. For his subsistence, the father had only his pay. In 1709, he retired to a country house near Marseille, at Saint-Barnabé, with his wife and three sons: Jean-Baptiste, François-Guillaume, and Louis-César. A Turkish servant and Suzanne Borelli, a maidservant, completed the household. Antoine, the eldest, served in the navy; Étienne Gayetan was a sub-lieutenant of infantry.
The three years passed in this country retreat were, writes the chronicler, one continuous quarrel. On the 16th of October 1712, the day of the parish feast, the family dined together. Jean-Baptiste had been expected to take his meal elsewhere, at the house of the curate Senclou, whose niece he had wedded without his father’s consent; yet the chronicle records that the father had forgiven him and took pleasure in keeping him by his side. After dinner, François-Guillaume demanded money to repair to the festivities. His father offered him first five sous, then ten, sums which the son deemed paltry. Invectives ensued.
Anne de S*** emerged from an adjoining room and entered the fray. François-Guillaume took his stand upon the threshold, sword in hand, threatening his father. The captain summoned his domestic and bade him saddle a horse: he intended to ride to Marseille and lodge a complaint against his sons. Jean-Baptiste declared his resolve to stand by his brother. Thereupon, according to Champagnac’s account, their mother warned them that they were undone should their father lay a complaint against them. She seized her husband by the hair and threw him down; Jean-Baptiste flung himself upon him. François-Guillaume wounded him in the head with his sword, whereupon Jean-Baptiste and his mother smothered him. Louis-César, who was but thirteen years of age, wept in a corner of the chamber. The domestic, seized with dread, knew not how to intervene.
The deed accomplished, it became necessary to lend another countenance to the death. Anne de S*** gave an écu to François-Guillaume that he might attend the feast. Jean-Baptiste and the servant conveyed the corpse to the upper part of the house. The mother then sent for the curate Senclou, through the agency of Louis-César. Upon his arrival, she disclosed that her two sons had just killed their father, and besought his counsel. The chronicler relates that he proposed at first to lay the body in bed and put forth a sudden death; when the mother objected that the wounds rendered such an account scarcely credible, he suggested casting the body from the window, feigning a fall while hanging a birdcage.
The family acted upon this advice. Jean-Baptiste hurled the body from the casement; Anne bled a fowl upon the spot where it had struck the ground. She tore her hair and shrieked, drawing the neighbours, to whom she recounted her husband’s fatal tumble. Surgeons arrived by order of the criminal lieutenant. The chronicle states that they were already apprised of this version and examined the corpse with such remissness that they failed to perceive the marks of murder. This first inquest therefore brought no truth to light; for several years, the demise of François D de S continued to be given out as an accidental fall.
The widow was now bereft of her husband’s emoluments. Her brother-in-law, the Count de S***, secured for the mother and children an annuity of six hundred livres. This provision was intended for their relief; it became instead the fuel of their discord. The mother wished to dispose of it alone. Meeting with resistance from her offspring, she departed for Aix. François-Guillaume and Étienne Gayetan took up residence in the country house; Jean-Baptiste and Louis-César lodged in Marseille.
Étienne Gayetan sought to take into his own hands the distribution of the allowance, aiming, as the chronicle states, at a more frugal governance. Jean-Baptiste opposed him. Étienne threatened to make known the crime. He wrote to the Marquis de Montolieu, a former friend of his father, laying bare the murder; he bade Louis-César read this missive and permitted him to bear it away that he might show it to Jean-Baptiste. The latter replied by another letter to the same marquis, laying the crime solely at the door of his mother and François-Guillaume. Anne de S, for her part, addressed the Count de S, her brother-in-law, casting the entire blame upon Jean-Baptiste alone; the count returned her letter, advising her to commit it to the flames.
The Marquis de Montolieu, incensed by Étienne’s disclosure, contemplated soliciting a lettre de cachet to banish the members of the family from the realm. He took counsel with the Marquis de Cavoye; the young men’s uncle, the Count de S***, dissuaded him from this course, fearing that the King might demand the reasons for the order requested. It was proposed that the letter be burned. Yet that of Jean-Baptiste, addressed to the Marquis de Montolieu, was inadvertently mingled with papers that Cavoye delivered into the hands of Chancellor Pontchartrain.
Pontchartrain had intended to examine them on the morrow. Casting his eye over the papers, he lighted upon the accusatory missive before deferring his reading. Its contents filled him with dread; he carried it straightway to the King. Cavoye, discovering his mistake the following day, asked that it be returned to him, but it was too late. The King enjoined the Parlement of Provence to apprehend all the culprits and bring the matter to trial. They were conducted to the prisons of Marseille.
The domestic was first heard as a witness. In his initial declaration he adhered to the tale of the fall from the window. He was thereupon arrested for false testimony and confined in a narrow dungeon to compel him to reveal what he knew. He then accused the mother and François-Guillaume, implicating Jean-Baptiste more faintly. Five months later, having asked to speak, he discharged the first two and accused Jean-Baptiste alone. These successive narratives proved insufficient to determine the exact share of each; confrontations and interrogations were to pit the conflicting accounts of the household against one another.
Other witnesses testified that the mother had previously sought to poison her husband with a draught designed to lay him low upon his bed. Jean-Baptiste confessed that she had sent him several times to the surgeon to purchase venomous drugs; the surgeon confirmed the requests, while averring that he had refused them. Brought face to face with his mother, Jean-Baptiste at first kept silence. Having heard her deposition, he contested that the crime should be imputed to him alone, bringing back to mind the dispute, his brother’s sword, and their mother’s intervention. Champagnac represents the interrogatories and confrontations as having dispelled all uncertainty; he records that the accused ended by confessing to the outrage.
The court of Marseille pronounced its sentence on the 10th of February 1714. Jean-Baptiste, François-Guillaume, Louis-César, their mother, and the domestic met with diverse determinations. The two elder sons were condemned to severe corporal pains and to death; the youngest was ordered to witness the executions and suffer perpetual banishment; their mother was condemned to decapitation; the servant, to be scourged. The condemned entered an appeal and were transferred to Aix. On the 18th of April, the Parlement confirmed the decree in nearly every particular, but discharged Louis-César from court. As for the servant, he was sentenced to witness the executions and to be suspended for two hours by the armpits: the court chastised him for remaining a motionless spectator, without pronouncing him a participant in the murder.
Champagnac records that the remaining condemned endured their sentence with resignation and repentance. Chancellor Pontchartrain obtained from the King an allowance for the innocent children: one hundred and fifty livres for them and two hundred livres for Antoine. The latter was nonetheless compelled to quit the naval service, despite his personal merits, for the public laid upon the entire family the stain of the few. The chronicle thus closes upon consequences outstripping individual guilt: accusation and condemnation fell upon those children who had borne no part in the crime, while the very annuity upon which their livelihood depended had given rise to the letters that ultimately brought it to light.