The daughter of Étienne Petit discovered him lying against a stone wall, in the pasture where her father had just led two cows to graze. Believing him asleep, she called out to him. He did not answer. Upon drawing nearer, the girl realized he was dead. She ran to the hamlet to summon aid; the neighbours then discovered the wound gaping above his collarbone. On 23 June 1827, the morning’s ploughing, the repose sheltered from the wind, and the quiet vigil over the beasts had ended in a scene of murder.
Suspicion soon turned toward Pierre Sauron, who resided with his family in Lascon. One of Petit’s daughters had been intimate with him; having conceived a child, she had been sent away from the district by her father to sever the liaison. Champagnac depicts Sauron as harbouring an implacable hatred toward Petit ever since that departure. He recounts threats, menacing gestures, and contrivances intended to make the farmer appear a thief of straw. These elements furnish the chronicler’s tale with an origin for the malice attributed to the accused, yet they remain facts reported by the chronicler, not a window into Sauron’s inner thoughts.
An earlier incident had already brought Sauron before the magistrates. One night, he had presented himself outside Petit’s house naked, brandishing a heavy cudgel, his head surmounted by a horsehair headpiece fashioned to imitate the locks of a reputed madman. When Petit stepped outside, Sauron struck him. The farmer attempted to seize his assailant by the hair, but the false wig remained in his grasp; the household rushed out, and the aggressor fled into the dark. Apprehended for violent assault, the defendant was ultimately acquitted for want of sufficient proof. A few months later, Petit was slain.
This initial affair had provided the village with a narrative ready to repeat itself. Sauron was already regarded as Petit’s sworn enemy; his assault had provoked a formal complaint; he had emerged from court a free man. When the gendarmes arrived in the wake of the murder, he was at his dwelling, but took to flight before being captured. He was brought before the corpse. Champagnac describes a man who raised his eyes to heaven and made signs of pity before freezing into immobility. These signs yielded no confession. In the eyes of the investigators, the death had to be tethered to a marksman, a weapon, and tangible objects that could be submitted to scrutiny.
The surgeons determined that Petit had been struck by a gunshot fired at point-blank range. The charge was loaded with fragments of a broken brass bell. They concluded that the victim had been seated against the wall, probably asleep, and that the projectile had followed a downward trajectory. These findings arose from their post-mortem examination and are recorded by the chronicle; they placed the murder in the open field, at the foot of the wall, yet they did not name the hand that pulled the trigger.
Sauron was known as a huntsman and had possessed a fowling piece for some time. Questioned concerning the weapon, he conveyed, according to the account, that he owned none; the gun he had formerly used had belonged to another and had been returned. Following repeated searches, the gendarmes nevertheless discovered a musket concealed between two joists in the stable. The flashpan was damp, and the barrel smelled of fresh powder. When pressed to explain himself, Sauron answered with gestures of denial.
In the pockets of the waistcoat he wore, fragments of a bell were likewise discovered. The investigators compared them with the shards extracted from Petit’s wound. According to Champagnac, they fitted together perfectly, originating from the selfsame object. The chronicler describes Sauron flushing red and losing his composure upon this confrontation. The hidden weapon, the powder, the metallic shards, and the prior acts of violence now constituted a coherent body of material and circumstantial evidence. The defence would be compelled to challenge it, even as the threats imputed to the prisoner had already spread throughout the canton.
The Court of Assizes of the Cantal, sitting at Saint-Flour, was seized of the matter on 17 August 1827. No eyewitness, the chronicle notes, had seen the shot fired; only two or three individuals had heard the report. The remaining witnesses deposed to the threats, the deep-seated rancour toward Petit, the nocturnal assault, and the staged thefts of straw through which Sauron had allegedly sought to incriminate his foe. Several repeated that Petit had harboured a presentiment of his doom and had openly voiced his dread of the mute. The chronicler asserts that these matters figured in the bill of indictment and were confirmed during the trial. Such hearsay cannot be confounded with an eyewitness account of the murder.
The preparation for the trial brought to light an obstacle the prosecution could not dismiss: how were questions and answers to pass between Sauron and the Court? Toussaint Sicard, a disciple of the Abbé Sicard, was summoned, accompanied by six deaf-and-mute youths under his instruction. Arriving several days before the trial, he endeavoured to converse with the prisoner. Before the empanelling of the jury, he declared that he could neither convey his thoughts to Sauron nor comprehend those of the accused. He petitioned for an adjournment to allow the necessary time for preparation, affirming that under such conditions he could not take the oath as an interpreter.
Another man, likewise deaf and mute, but educated and capable of reading and writing, resided in Saint-Flour. He agreed to replace Sicard and was duly sworn. The defence raised an immediate objection. Sauron’s counsel declared that he placed no confidence in the selected interpreter and, like Sicard, demanded that the cause be remanded; he maintained that it was impossible to defend his client under such auspices. The Court determined to proceed with the trial. Thus, it was with an interpreter whose appointment was contested, and without the continuance sought by the defence, that the proceedings went forward.
When the exhibits were produced, Sauron manifested no emotion, reports Champagnac. The witnesses confirmed their preliminary depositions. He was interrogated after the reading of the inquest report drawn up at the scene; the chronicler evokes an intricate pantomime, yet provides no means of verifying, question by question, what was truly understood on either side. The shortcomings of this interpretation illuminate the accused man’s precarious standing before the court; they do not, of themselves, constitute proof of guilt.
The public prosecutor bore down heavily upon premeditation. He invoked the antecedent violence, the threats, the hidden weapon, the scent of powder, and the bell fragments. The advocate for the defence, Maître Dessauret, argued vigorously against this conclusion, provoking sharp murmurs among the spectators. The jury found Sauron guilty, but acquitted him of premeditation. He was condemned to hard labour for life. Such is the penalty recorded in the chronicle; it does not state that Sauron was sent to the scaffold.
At the moment the judgment was pronounced, Sauron did not understand it, according to the chronicle. Later, within the prison, Toussaint Sicard helped him grasp the nature of his sentence. It was then that the man’s despair broke forth, and he let it be known that he would have preferred death. The volume records nothing of what became of him thereafter. It leaves his future concealed behind the verdict, just as it had left the prisoner’s answers shrouded behind an uncertain communication.
Étienne Petit was slain in a field where his daughter had come to seek him. Sauron was condemned, not to death, but to an entire lifetime of hard labour. Between these two certainties, the dossier assembles a hidden fowling piece, metallic fragments, a notorious enmity, and witnesses who had not seen the blow struck. It likewise encompasses a trial that the primary interpreter had judged impracticable, followed by a defence that pleaded in vain for an adjournment. Champagnac regards the circumstantial evidence as decisive and the guilt as established; yet the historical record must not transmute Sauron’s inability to take part in the debates of the courtroom into proof of his crime.