The evening of April 5, 1874—Easter Sunday—had begun with an indulgence. Ten-year-old Albert Boisaubert had been permitted to accompany his brothers to the village dance. Ernestine, his sister, remained alone at the house. The permission had been granted by their father; for Albert, the night was meant to be passed in the company of his brothers and brought to a close by a return to the family hearth. Yet the Gazette marks this very return as the juncture where domestic trust was undone. It is within this divide, between the village festival and the home, that the Gazette des Tribunaux situated the accusation: that Ernestine had then resolved to slay the child and determined to dispose of his body down a well.
The account appeared on June 1 and 2, following the proceedings of May 25 before the Seine-et-Marne Court of Assizes. M. de Lurcy presided; the printed headline announced the “murder of a brother by his sister.” The article sets forth the version of events presented in the indictment, recording thereafter the jury’s answers and the sentence pronounced. Between these two points lies the record of a single night, of a body recovered from a well, and of confessions which the journal describes as complete.
Ernestine Boisaubert was born in Melz-sur-Seine on December 29, 1854. She was nineteen years of age at the time of the trial, nine years older than Albert, her youngest brother. The bill of indictment recalled three prior convictions for theft and cited the unfavorable reports provided by her parents regarding her conduct, which were corroborated, according to the Gazette, by the local authorities. It ascribed to her a wicked disposition and habits of brutality. These elements formed the judicial portrait of the accused; they do not, of themselves, explain the murder.
The bill made mention of three brothers: Ernest, aged sixteen; Eugène, aged fourteen; and Albert, aged ten. All had endured acts of violence in varying degrees. The two elders were capable of resisting their sister, whereas Albert, being the youngest, remained far more defenseless against her mistreatment. The prosecution portrayed Ernestine’s animosity toward him as long-standing and distinct. The indictment linked this hostility to her earlier acts of violence; in this manner, the article frames the crime within a domestic history, without assigning it any more precise motive.
On April 5, the father granted Albert permission to attend the dance alongside Ernest and Eugène. Ernestine, for her part, stayed behind in the family dwelling. According to the indictment, she confessed to having conceived at that moment the plan to kill her brother and to having contemplated casting him into a well. The alleged premeditation was thus tied to that very day: the intent was said to have preceded the child’s return, rather than arising in the heat of a sudden quarrel.
Toward ten o’clock in the evening, Ernestine went out under the pretext of procuring a candle. She made her way to the dance and sent for Albert. She told him that the hour was late and urged him to return home with her to their parents. The child offered no resistance and set off with his sister. From the hall where the festivities continued, the narrative turns to a deserted village lane. The path back to the house became the road that severed Albert from his brothers, and presently from life itself. A familiar piece of counsel—that it was late, that it was time to go home—sufficed, in this version of the facts, to draw the youngest child away from the dance. The account attributes neither suspicion nor hesitation to Albert, nor does it invent any words beyond the advice so recorded. Trust is here manifested in an ordinary act: following his sister toward their parents’ abode. The admonition to return carries a singular gravity, for Albert obeyed it and parted from his brothers. The prosecution interpreted what followed as the means devised to isolate him; the article moves from the summons to the departure, and from the deserted lane to the assault, without recording any exchange between them.
In that lane, now entirely forsaken, the child had left his brothers upon his sister’s urging; this familiar journey homeward is the final deed recorded before the attack. The indictment charged her with seizing the child and violently striking his head against a wall. She was then said to have obstructed his breath by pressing her hand over his face. When he lay lifeless, she cast him into a well situated hard by. Albert’s cap had reportedly been flung into a pond, in all likelihood, according to the prosecution, to suggest an accidental drowning.
The corpse was drawn from the well on April 7. The physicians concluded that death had been occasioned by asphyxiation. The medical men thereby established the cause of death, while the indictment delineated the assault and the design imputed to Ernestine. Two days had elapsed between that Easter night and the recovery of the body.
Ernestine began by denying the charges, but subsequently made, as the Gazette reports, full confessions. The journal does not reproduce her exact words, yet presents them as an affirmation of the prosecution’s case. In court, the formal charge accused her of having willfully committed homicide upon the person of Albert Boisaubert, with premeditation, at Melz-sur-Seine on April 5, 1874. The Gazette cites Articles 295, 296, and 302 of the Penal Code. Its headline employs the term “assassination”; the phrasing of the questions submitted to the jurors distinguishes between willful homicide and premeditation.
M. Félix Voisin, a member of the National Assembly and public prosecutor at Melun, occupied the seat of the public ministry. Maître Legavre, of the Melun bar, presented the defense of Ernestine. The summary does not disclose their arguments. Following the address of the presiding judge, the jurors retired; they answered in the affirmative to the question of willful homicide, and likewise to that of premeditation. They nevertheless accorded the prisoner the benefit of extenuating circumstances.
The court condemned Ernestine to hard labor for life. This sentence concludes the report. A father’s permission had brought Albert to the village dance with his brothers; the judicial record brings him back onto the road home with his sister, and then comes to an abrupt halt upon the verdict. In this sudden termination, the anticipated return and the judicial sentence stand side by side: the Gazette recorded how the child was lured from the festivities, and set down the findings of the jury, but it yields neither the exact words of the pleadings nor the grounds for the extenuating circumstances.