At the foot of the altar, Marie Delorme was said to have uttered a refusal. Yet the priest pursued the ceremony, and the young woman, overcome by faintness, was led to the parish register and made to sign. This scene, drawn from her counsel’s brief, was to form the crucible of a litigation in which every gesture admitted of two readings: the silence, the signature, the festivities, and the subsequent flight. Ten years later, justice would leave the marriage intact; it would not, however, bequeath to us any certainty as to what had truly transpired within the house at Saint-Cloud.
Marie was born in 1709. Her mother had wed Monsieur Dupin in 1716, and it was beneath her stepfather’s roof that the girl was reared. She possessed no personal fortune. Dupin had undertaken her education and had promised her, according to the narrative, a considerable dowry. When he selected for her Monsieur Rapally, a Treasurer of France, the alliance appeared well suited to the interests of both houses. The prospective bridegroom pledged an annual life-annuity and the reversion of his entire estate upon his demise; Dupin, for his part, was to provide a dowry of two hundred thousand livres.
Yet Marie would have none of this man. At first, Rapally was not introduced to her under his true name, nor as the suitor settled upon by her family. The account relates that he was spoken of as a physician named La Grange, a married man and a father, in order to test her inclinations. When she discovered his true identity, her refusal remained unshaken. Her mother and stepfather nevertheless went forward with the preparations. The instruments were drawn up; the pecuniary covenant took shape; the expected submission of the maiden formed an integral part of the covenant.
The contract was executed on the 5th of September, 1726. The accounts of the parties would subsequently diverge upon the manner of its presentation. Marie’s advocate asserted that the deed was read in her absence, and that she was merely brought in to sign, as though her assent were an understood matter. Rapally maintained that she had taken part in the festivities arranged for the occasion. A few days later, on the 9th of September, the families celebrated the betrothal. The young woman was sixteen years of age, nearing seventeen, and stood at the centre of a compact settled by elders who spoke only of settlements, covenants, and worldly futures.
The nuptial ceremony was solemnised in the church of Saint-Eustache, in Paris, at an early hour of the morning. The account of the constraint proceeds from the memorial of Maître Terrasson, counsel for Marie. According to him, the church doors were barred to exclude witnesses; when the priest pronounced the ritual interrogation, she answered no. Her stepfather was said to have pressed her to say yes. She reportedly remained mute, sank into a swoon, and was thereafter brought forward to sign the register. The chapter notes that this narration is that of the plaintiff’s advocate, and does not represent an independent judicial finding on each particular.
Rapally offered a very different version. His advocate, Maître Cochin, contended that Marie had attended the rejoicings, appeared cheerful on the wedding day, held her husband’s hand during the nuptial blessing, and subscribed her name without demur. He acknowledged a resistance to the consummation of the marriage, but ascribed it to the modest reserve of a youthful bride. He affirmed that the initial days had passed in mutual accord, and that the breach had opened only after Rapally’s departure for Paris. In the pleadings of the two advocates, the selfsame outward signs—a toilet, a silence, a signature—assumed opposing values according to the hand that recounted them.
Following the ceremony, Marie was said to have sought seclusion. Rapally’s defence, on the contrary, depicted a bride who danced and sat down to the wedding feast. According to Terrasson, her mother had her conducted to the bridal chamber with the assistance of two waiting-women. Marie complained of indisposition and demanded that her husband withdraw. The chapter then relates that the spouses were brought together on several occasions across five nights, without the young woman ever ceasing to manifest her refusal. Rapally insisted that he had encountered nothing beyond ordinary coyness. These scenes, transmitted through contradictory briefs, illuminate the subject-matter of the trial without resolving the conflict between the two accounts.
Marie soon withdrew into a convent and petitioned that the marriage be declared null and void. The first proceedings turned upon the freedom of her consent. Rapally answered that she had never suffered constraint, and that the petition arose from a late-born animosity, perhaps instigated by the Dupins. His own interest, he argued, was insufficient to explain his resistance to the dissolution: he was defending the honour and the validity of an engagement contracted before the Church. Terrasson contended that Marie’s financial and emotional dependence upon her stepfather had lent decisive efficacy to his menaces.
The initial judgment favoured Marie’s prayer on an essential point: it authorised an inquest to establish the coercion alleged to have occurred during the marriage. Rapally appealed. On the 6th of September, 1727, a Parisian jurisdiction reversed this first ruling and dismissed the petition for nullity. Marie then had recourse to the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of Lyon, which reopened the possibility of adducing evidence, while expressly barring the allegation that she had uttered a negative response during the ceremony. Rapally contested this in turn. The subsequent decrees did not undo the marriage; the chronology of the compilation grows uncertain in reporting the conclusion of this initial litigation, and it is not prudent to fix a definite date here.
Cohabitation, however, had not followed an even course. Marie departed for Chambéry, in Savoy, while the marriage remained in full force. Rapally did not seek her extradition; he chose instead to sue Dupin to compel performance of the financial covenants governing the dowry. After two years of litigation, Dupin was ordered to honour them in January 1730, a decree executed some months later. A rumour subsequently spread announcing Rapally’s death in Italy. Marie returned to France; but finding him alive, she retreated to her stepfather’s house and resumed the name of Demoiselle Delorme.
In September 1733, she nevertheless presented herself at her husband’s domicile in the company of officers of justice, demanding possession in vindication of her conjugal rights. Rapally was absent. Upon his return from Genoa, he proposed that she spend six months in a convent, where they might visit one another and ascertain whether a reconciliation was possible. Marie was initially incensed; friends intervened, and she took up residence beneath his roof on the 28th of January, 1734. The chapter states that he saw to her comfort and that she appeared touched by his attentions. The peace was not untroubled: Marie’s kin were said once more to have sown seeds of discord, though the source offers little detail upon this interlude.
A final lawsuit arose after Marie accused Rapally of having struck her. She claimed that he had reviled her, cast her to the floor, and beaten her with such violence that she had spat blood. She repaired to a surgeon and lodged a complaint. The medical certificates mentioned in the chapter noted contusions upon her arms and near the chest, which the physician deemed consistent with blows from fists or similar violence; they did not confirm the abdominal injuries she had described. Rapally denied all cruelty. His advocate cited the absence of witnesses, Marie’s contradictions, and her prior judicial history.
This complaint initiated a second proceeding, distinct from the initial appeal for nullity. By a decree of the 21st of March, 1735, Marie was nonsuited in her application to prove the alleged battery; on the 24th of April, 1736, this decree was affirmed upon appeal. The chapter does not state that this violence was established and then disproved: the admission of proof was simply refused. The marriage therefore remained in force. The account concludes without recording whether the spouses ever lived together again, nor what became of Marie after these rulings. It preserves the conflicting testimony of the family, the husband, and the young woman, leaving unresolved that which the judicial inquiry failed to determine.