At the Luxembourg Palace, the lodging-house keepers came to collect what the city owed them for housing refugees of the siege. At the exit, a man lay in wait, escorting them to a wine merchant on the Rue de Vaugirard; there, before Flambard, the indemnity changed hands almost at once. Half, it was said, was to pay for services rendered. The proceeding bore the outward semblance of an act of assistance; for several defendants, it became the means of securing a formidable hold over people who feared receiving nothing at all.
The Siege of Paris had left behind a tangled web of accounts. Inhabitants of the suburbs, driven from their homes, had been quartered by requisition within the capital; other tenants, unable to pay, had remained in the lodgings they occupied. The landlords and lodging-house keepers demanded an indemnity. The trade union they had formed to defend their interests became entangled in the settlement of claims, and the municipal administration, overwhelmed by the volume of dossiers, relinquished a portion of the casework to offices established outside its own departments. Supervision rested on nebulous procedures, the ledgers were incomplete, and official responsibilities continually overlapped.
Into this grey zone stepped Flambard, a former clerk of the twentieth-arrondissement town hall turned business agent. The prosecution alleged that he had exploited his former connections, as well as those of Roquejoffre, a clerk in the union’s employ, to obtain the lists of lodging-house keepers and ascertain which claims had already been lodged. Further intelligence came from subordinate agents in the police commissariats, who were promised money or induced to recommend the agency. Flambard admitted to having procured lists covering sixty-four quarters and to having remunerated certain agents. Armed with these names, Ener would call upon the lodging-house keepers or summon them to his residence.
The promise was artfully pitched, rooted as it was in genuine apprehension. The deadlines appeared to have expired; those who had not yet filed claims could well believe their indemnities forfeited. Flambard, Ener, and Toussaint presented themselves, according to the needs of the moment, as close associates of the union or of the Prefecture. They laid claim to powerful patronage within the Luxembourg—extending even to a former imperial chamberlain—and asserted that they could have the claimants relieved of their forfeiture. To hesitant landlords they displayed circulars from the union, while Campionnet, an auxiliary clerk at the Prefecture assigned to the indemnities, supplied details regarding the sums awarded and the days of disbursement. Such precise knowledge lent the agency an aura of authority it did not possess.
The price of this intervention was seldom concealed: half the indemnity. The landlords signed undertakings, often persuaded that they would obtain nothing otherwise. Once the municipal cashier had paid out the funds, Ener shadowed them to the gates of the Luxembourg and steered them to the wine merchant. Flambard counted the coins; Toussaint stowed them inside a leather satchel. The trial record estimates that in two sittings alone, for the twelfth and thirteenth arrondissements, the confederacy gathered 16,000 francs, and subsequently 30,000 francs. These were figures cited at the bar, drawn from the indictment presented by the prosecution, rather than proof that every landlord had suffered an identical fate.
A few, upon exiting, gave Ener the slip. That evening or the following day, the three men would appear at their doors to claim their share, uttering threats of the commissariat—threats which, according to the prosecution, were never carried out against those who refused. The depositions did not paint a uniform picture. Some lodging-house keepers confirmed the pretensions of influence and the fifty-percent pledges; other witnesses for the defense maintained that Flambard and Ener had merely introduced themselves as business agents. The arguments thus turned upon the precise words employed, but also upon what made them so effective: accurate administrative intelligence, offices within the Luxembourg, and police agents entangled in the transactions.
Before the tribunal, the threads of responsibility diverged. Flambard did not deny procuring the lists or paying money to municipal clerks; he maintained, however, that the formal partnership with Ener and Toussaint was merely a draft, drawn up by a former fellow prisoner and never intended to be executed. Ener claimed he had only sought to recover a personal debt and had merely acted as Flambard’s employee. Toussaint stated he was paid fifteen francs a month and denied pocketing any commission. Roquejoffre admitted to having received 1,000 francs, but professed to have believed the accounts were regular. Campionnet, employed in the indemnity office, was accused of having furnished confidential information in exchange for payment.
The City, for its part, had allowed a system of singular frailty to take root. The accounts passed through the union; seconded clerks held conflicting views of their duties; and dates entered into the police ledgers frequently omitted the year. The court-appointed expert, Magnin, explained that a comprehensive audit was at times impossible. The presiding judge underscored the strangeness of an administration that entrusted verification to a union representing the very claimants concerned, without defining clear safeguards. Delamare, the union syndic, admitted that he checked little and that incomplete ledgers made oversight difficult. He had nonetheless lodged a complaint upon learning of the agency’s practices.
The method employed by Flambard and his associates was not confined to levying a commission upon sums legitimately due. According to the evidence upheld in the judgment, the schedules prepared within the agency were falsified or inflated. Tenants who had paid were shown as debtors; individuals who had departed years earlier were recorded as having vacated the premises in 1871, because the ledgers did not consistently indicate the calendar year. The Farge matter followed a different design: he was alleged to have reported unpaid rents to his landlord to obtain a rebate, only to claim an indemnity from the City upon those very same rents. The indictment likewise encompassed Desmont, who was implicated in these dealings.
The public prosecutor pressed the full weight of the charges; the advocates Lachaud, Pannier, and Blondel presented the defense. The record of the sitting of May 23 indicates that after the pleadings, the court adjourned to the following day for the delivery of the verdict. The judgment rendered on May 26, however, did not follow all counts of the indictment. The tribunal found Flambard, Ener, and Toussaint, as well as Roquejoffre and Campionnet, guilty of swindling to the detriment of the lodging-house keepers; it held as established the fraudulent maneuvers, the assumption of false status or feigned powers, and the self-interested communication of official intelligence.
Conversely, the court acquitted Flambard, Toussaint, Ener, and Roquejoffre of swindling to the detriment of the City of Paris. It held that maneuvers intended to deceive the municipality had not been sufficiently proven: though the accounts might be false and the actions corrupt, the administration had failed to exercise the oversight expected of it. Farge and Desmont were likewise discharged of the complaints regarding the alleged swindles against the landlords. The ruling did not whitewash the functioning of the municipal bureaux; rather, it drew a line between fraud proven against private citizens and that which the court deemed unproven against the city.
For Flambard, the sentence was fixed at two years’ imprisonment, five years of police surveillance, and a fine of 500 francs; Ener and Toussaint were each sentenced to eight months and a fine of 300 francs, with Roquejoffre and Campionnet receiving two months. The penalties attached a cost to the maneuvers established against the lodging-house keepers, while the tribunal refused to transform the negligence of the municipal bureaux into proven swindling against the City. Between the half-share extorted from the indemnities and the ledgers left without adequate scrutiny, the judgment traced a distinct boundary: the middlemen would answer for their spurious powers, and the administration for its own neglect. The lodging-house keepers, for their part, did not thereby regain their lost trust.