On the morning of 10 May 1840, inhabitants of Artigues caught sight of a young woman’s body in a stream. Farther along, on that same day, a second was discovered—that of a young girl. The current had not caused their deaths: the account published many years later in the New Pitaval describes two victims struck down before being cast into the water. Traces of blood led toward the neighbouring wood. In Bordeaux, where the intelligence spread swiftly, the inquiry would soon overtake a man who had already endeavoured to make another child disappear, several hundred leagues distant.
The name of this first victim had long been wanting. Toward the middle of March, an unknown lad had been discovered near La Villette, then situated outside Paris. The chapter in the Pitaval places the affair eight weeks prior to the murders at Artigues; the exact date is corrupted in its optical text. The chronicle reports that the child had been slain, then abandoned in a roadside ditch. No one came forward to claim him. His remains were conveyed to Paris, laid out at the Morgue, and subsequently embalmed so that newly arrived visitors might attempt to recognise him. Appellations directed to families, schoolmasters, and kinsfolk failed to dispel the mystery.
At Artigues, the second discovery lent the drama a far darker gravity. The blood appeared to lead from the water toward a clearing in the woods where the crime was believed to have been committed. The bodies had been concealed separately; the young girl lay wrapped in a shawl. Terror seized the commune, and then Bordeaux. These particulars derive from a retrospective volume, and not from an official deposition consulted firsthand.
That same morning, a traveller had boarded the diligence from Bergerac to Bordeaux after waiting for it near Les Quatre-Pavillons. He carried a night-bag and two small hampers. At the Chaban inn, he took breakfast, requested that a fire be kindled, and subsequently fell asleep. Meanwhile, the innkeeper learned of the discovery of the bodies and compared the tidings with the route taken by his guest, who had arrived from the environs of Artigues. The man’s reticence and the hour of his arrival completed the host’s disquiet. He alerted the police.
Upon the hampers, the constables reportedly observed spots of blood, as well as a mark upon a shirtsleeve. Strips of torn cloth were likewise discovered, which witnesses judged to have come from women’s garments. The comparison reported by the Pitaval was of an indirect nature: witnesses merely opined that the fabrics appeared to be of identical weave. The man initially denied having any knowledge whatsoever of the crimes. On the morning of 11 May, just as he was quitting the inn to resume his journey by diligence toward Paris, he was placed under arrest.
He subsequently wrote to the examining magistrate. In these few lines, the Pitaval reports, he confessed to having slain the woman and the child, naming them as Marie Anizat and her daughter Mathilde. He gave his own name as Pierre-Vincent Elicabide, a native of Béarn. Before the magistrate, he added that the unknown boy of La Villette was Joseph Anizat, the son of Marie and brother of Mathilde, and that he had murdered him as well. The Pitaval states that kinfolk subsequently confirmed the family’s identity.
To understand how this family had been drawn into his flight, the chronicle retraces events of a few years prior. Elicabide had studied in several seminaries before renouncing the ecclesiastical state. He became a schoolmaster and directed an elementary school near Pau. It was there that he made the acquaintance of Marie Anizat, a young widow seeking a sound education for her children. Her husband had perished in Algeria in 1833. Marie worked to provide for Joseph, born in 1829, and Mathilde, born in 1831.
The Pitaval portrays him as ambitious and discontented; this retrospective portrait should not be taken for a clinical diagnosis. In the autumn of 1839, he resigned his post for Paris, persuaded that he would meet with greater fortune there, yet he found neither a sufficient number of pupils nor adequate resources. Nevertheless, in his letters to Marie, he depicted an assured future: a vast educational establishment, a shared existence, and a place for Joseph within the academy he professed to be founding.
At first, he sent for the boy alone. In a letter of January 1840 reproduced by the Pitaval, he promised to look after Joseph and urged the mother to follow thereafter; toward the close of February, he intimated that his enterprise was advancing. Marie at length consented to the temporary separation. She borrowed modest sums from her patrons, scraped together funds for her son, and entrusted him to Mademoiselle Lenoir, a milliner journeying toward Paris. On 11 March, she embraced Joseph for the last time. Three days later, according to the narrative, the milliner delivered him into Elicabide’s hands in the courtyard of the coach office.
The young man did not conduct the child to his lodgings. He led him to an eating-house, left him for a few moments, and wrote to Marie that the lad had arrived in good health. The Pitaval adds that Joseph penned a few lines concerning Paris, perhaps at the adult’s dictation; the missive preserved the mother’s trust. According to the reported confession, Elicabide had purchased a hammer prior to the boy’s arrival. That evening, he conducted him beyond the city toward La Villette and took his life. The chronicle then describes the abandonment of the body in the ditch. We may relate this sequence as the confession ascribed to Elicabide, rather than as an independent testimony of the scene itself.
During the ensuing weeks, Elicabide wrote that Joseph was thriving and growing accustomed to Paris. He accounted for the boy’s lack of letters and promised an easier life the moment the mother should arrive. The discovery of the body at La Villette had not led to its recognition; in Pau, Marie remained ignorant of her son’s death. She ultimately undertook the journey she had been so pressingly urged to make.
Elicabide had quitted Paris to join her, yet he reached Bordeaux after she did. The chronicle states that he was short of funds and solicited one hundred francs from his sister, who was employed in the vicinity. On 8 May, he repaired to the inn where Marie awaited him. The following day, they dined with Justine Cazauran, an acquaintance of Marie’s; the mother spoke of Joseph and of their imminent reunion. The chronicle records no portent of what was to follow.
That evening, Elicabide hired a conveyance and drove Marie and Mathilde toward Les Quatre-Pavillons. The three then proceeded on foot along the road. According to his subsequent declarations, he carried a hammer in his bag and had already reconnoitred the ground to select a place where the crime might remain concealed. He struck down Marie and Mathilde near the wood, conveyed their bodies to the stream, and scattered or interred a portion of their effects. The chronicle proceeds to describe the concealment of the remains; the verdict as recorded pronounced both murders to have been committed with premeditation.
Elicabide’s explanations shifted over time. He maintained initially that Joseph’s death had been the result of a sudden paroxysm of despair, and that the slayings of the mother and daughter were intended merely to cloak the first crime. Yet he admitted to having purchased the hammer prior to the child’s arrival. Later, according to the Pitaval, he confessed to having contemplated all three deaths after forfeiting all hope of establishing an independent livelihood with Marie. He likewise pleaded an unsettled mental state, declared himself subject to irresistible impulses, and claimed to have believed he was delivering his victims from a wretched future. These several versions are not to be confounded. They illustrate the motives he successively advanced; they do not alter the question the tribunal had to resolve—namely, his criminal responsibility.
The money and property carried off gave rise to another point of dispute. Elicabide had expended the funds remitted with Joseph, seized a sum that Marie had on her person, and retained certain jewels belonging to the victims. He asserted that several objects had been taken solely to hinder the identification of the bodies; the prosecution discerned in this an intent to commit larceny. His counsel separately contested the charge of domestic theft, invoking the statutory rules governing complaints between kindred as reported by the chronicle. The verdict encompassed both the murders and the robbery.
The trial opened before the Court of Assizes of the Gironde in Bordeaux on 9 September 1840, concluding on the 11th, according to the chapter. The defence rested upon the prisoner’s mental condition. Doctor Canihac, whose opinion is abridged by the Pitaval, dismissed the notion of monomania: the fact that Elicabide remembered and reasoned clearly both prior to and following the deeds appeared to him incompatible with such an explanation. This opinion, reflective of the medical debates of the era, does not constitute a modern psychiatric evaluation. The prosecution laid stress upon the preparations and the falsehoods as manifest tokens of premeditation.
Following approximately half an hour of deliberation, the jurors returned an affirmative verdict upon all nine questions submitted to them. The court condemned Elicabide to death for the three premeditated murders and the robbery that followed them. The chronicler relates that he received the sentence without utterance, and was subsequently executed; he does not specify the precise date. His moral conclusion is severe; it serves likewise to illustrate the manner in which the New Pitaval constructed its criminals.
Three bodies, initially nameless, had been found: Joseph near Paris, then Marie and Mathilde near Bordeaux. The arrest bridged the distance between these places; the confession, according to the Pitaval, restored their identities to the dead. Yet the surviving narrative is no verbatim transcript of the hearings: it is a reconstruction of 1859, which must be read by carefully distinguishing admissions, prosecution arguments, and the verdict of the jury.