At daybreak, the strongbox of M. Tiollier was discovered upon the threshold of his place of business, situated on one of the busiest thoroughfares of Chambéry. It remained locked. The ring of keys that the merchant was accustomed to carry upon his person lay atop the chest; within, other securities of far greater consequence than those which had vanished remained undisturbed. Four bearer annuities, however, had been taken from their recess. A few weeks later, two were negotiated in Marseille under an assumed name, while two others were cashed in Chambéry itself.
M. Tiollier presided over the Tribunal of Commerce. In the early days of September 1873, he discovered the theft of four annuity certificates, entered at a nominal value of 1,025 francs in the judicial record. At the end of October, whilst he and his domestic staff were still residing in the country, a second housebreaking took place. On this occasion, six hundred francs in foreign currency were carried off. The cabinet, visited before, had been pried open once again and ransacked with meticulous care. The two crimes seemed to answer one another, yet the identity of their author remained cloaked in darkness.
The trail of the certificates was only uncovered later, through an official dispatch from the Director of the Public Debt. Two certificates had been negotiated at Marseille on 13 October; two others, three days thereafter, in Chambéry. In the latter city, the restaurateur Aghettar had presented them to his customary banker. In Marseille, the man who had tendered the bonds had given his name as Pierre Senta. The distance separating the two cities did not prevent their paths from converging: Aghettar was an acquaintance of Senta, and both lodged upon premises kept by Aimone.
When questioned concerning the negotiation in Chambéry, Aghettar did not deny having presented the paper; he sought, however, to explain away its origin. An unknown Italian, he maintained, had been brought to him by Senta and Aimone. He had harboured, he swore, no cause to distrust this foreigner. Senta and Aimone initially corroborated this version of events, while professing themselves utterly unable to furnish the slightest detail regarding the stranger. Aimone was placed under arrest; Senta succeeded in taking flight.
The letters subsequently sent by Aghettar to his fugitive companion lent this cautious posture a far more sinister hue. On 27 December, while the gendarmerie was actively scouring the countryside for him, Aghettar addressed a letter to Senta under a false name and cover. He informed him that Aimone was still at his shop, warned him that he was closely pursued, and pledged to keep him apprised. Two days later, he urgently summoned him to Bardonecchia, across the Italian frontier, so that they might agree upon the answers to be given to the examining magistrate.
At the end of the month, Aghettar was examined once more. He asserted that Senta had departed Chambéry for three days in October under the pretext of visiting Lyon, and professed total ignorance as to his present whereabouts. He added that Senta must have deceitfully imposed upon him in bringing him the securities. The initial deposition of Troccar had confirmed that Senta had presented himself in Marseille on 13 October. Yet Troccar reconsidered after taking counsel from his wife—an aunt of Aghettar: he thereupon revealed that Aghettar himself had come to negotiate the two certificates, passing himself off under the name of Pierre Senta, and had pocketed the 18,400 francs. This testimony directly contradicted the assertion that Senta had gone to Lyon and that Aghettar had known nothing of his movements.
Senta, detained in Italy after surrendering to the authorities, offered an entirely different account. He swore that he had brought all four certificates to Aghettar on the very same day. According to him, the tale of the mysterious foreigner in Chambéry was a fabrication, devised so that the certificates might be represented to the banker as coming from an indebted client, thereby shielding Aghettar from any prospective inquiry. Senta added that he had received a mere five hundred francs, which he had straightway handed over to Aimone. The remainder, he claimed, had been retained by Aghettar, who had come to warn Aimone only after the arrests had commenced, disclosing then for the first time that the Marseille transaction had been executed under Senta's name.
The judicial authorities possessed no unified narrative. Aghettar denied any role in the Marseille transaction, acknowledging only the two bonds he had negotiated in Chambéry, which he persisted in claiming had come from an unknown third party. Senta accused Aghettar of pocketing the lion's share of the Marseille proceeds. Aimone denied all complicity. Yet the investigators scrutinized these contradictory statements against dates, correspondence, and Aghettar’s expenditures. Upon his return to Sottegno, Senta was, according to the report, in a state of absolute penury. Conversely, from the very date of the theft, Aghettar had made payments and acquisitions far exceeding the ordinary revenues of his establishment.
On 3 December, he paid fourteen thousand francs towards the acquisition of an estate valued at thirty-two thousand francs, displaying an unusual eagerness to discharge the entire balance without delay. Then, on 30 December, on the eve of his arrest, he demanded the immediate settlement of several debts owed to him, despite having previously granted liberal extensions. He explained to his debtors that he found himself in grave difficulties, that he had purchased certain securities, and that he hoped to extricate himself by means of ready cash. In a subsequent examination, he explained that he had held the funds for several weeks awaiting the rightful owner of the bonds to present himself; he intimated, however, that he could easily have remitted them through the postal service.
The second housebreaking presented a distinct enigma. The foreign specie vanished on 26 October, well after the negotiation of the bonds on the 13th and 16th. The mode of entry resembled the first, and the same cabinet had been ransacked anew; yet the contemporary chronicle draws no link between this second disappearance and the men tried for receiving the stolen securities. It remains recorded as an unsolved occurrence without a designated culprit. This judicial demarcation is significant: the trial did not blend two successive burglaries into a single overarching charge with an answer to every riddle.
In the courtroom, the accused did not stand without support. Nearly forty character witnesses—bankers, merchants, and tradesmen—stepped forward to attest that they held Aghettar in the highest esteem and trust. Aimone, likewise, enjoyed an unblemished reputation. The defence laid great stress upon the accused restaurateur's industrious life and the unblemished credit he had long commanded. In the course of the proceedings, M. Tiollier constituted himself a civil party. Aghettar, through his counsel, declared himself prepared to indemnify the victim in full, covering capital, interest, and costs. The following morning, before the court resumed, a formal notarial agreement was executed under the surety of the Troccar couple. Numerous defence witnesses remained to be heard; the financial reparation thus intervened in the heat of the trial, not as a consequence of judgment.
The public prosecutor refused to view this financial restitution as an end to the prosecution. The Advocate General argued that tardy restitution could not wipe out the outrage committed against public order; indeed, he argued that Aghettar’s social credit had merely afforded him the leverage to cast blame upon a companion who had fled. The defence, for its part, dwelt upon their client’s industry, his professional virtues, and the confidence reposed in him by the town. Counsel contended that mere circumstantial appearances could not establish that he had known the illicit provenance of the paper.
The proceedings concluded after several days of animated argument. The jury returned a verdict finding Aghettar guilty of receiving stolen goods, without aggravating circumstances; he was thus absolved of having been the actual burglar. The court sentenced him to five years’ solitary confinement and ten years of police surveillance. Aimone was acquitted. The official report leaves the ultimate legal fate of Senta unrecorded and sheds no light upon the second theft of six hundred francs. When the trial reached its close, four bearer bonds had brought before the jury an esteemed tradesman, a fugitive companion, and a lodging-house keeper whose degree of complicity could never be established.
Documentary note: Contemporary account of the proceedings of 25, 26, and 27 May 1874. The conflicting testimonies of Aghettar and Senta are documented as recorded; the conviction reported was strictly for receiving stolen property, while Aimone was acquitted. The historical OCR text displays several degraded readings and was not collated against the manuscript facsimile.