On Sunday, February 1, 1874, M. Bonnebaigt presented himself at Sénozan. Mlle Despeyrous had attained her legal majority on January 28; he sought to learn whether the marriage he still believed in preparation would take place. Four years of correspondence and clandestine visits had narrowed down to a single answer, which the young woman had now instructed her uncle to deliver. That day, M. Lacroix discharged his shotgun upon him, shattering his jaw.
The Gazette des Tribunaux does not reproduce the correspondence. It reports only that the letters were numerous, lengthy, and that certain passages, deemed obscene, prompted the court to order the proceedings held behind closed doors. It nevertheless recounts the circumstances preceding the rupture. M. Bonnebaigt, a native of Dax aged twenty-eight, had served as a notary’s clerk and subsequently as an attorney’s clerk in Toulouse. At the Floral Games, more than four years earlier, he had noticed Mlle Despeyrous, then seventeen years of age. According to the narrative, nocturnal trysts were facilitated through the complicity of a lady’s maid. The journal condemns this servant in severe terms, though it records neither her name nor her testimony.
Mlle Despeyrous had lost her mother in early childhood. The deceased was the sister of M. François Lacroix. Her father had remarried, and relations between the young lady and her stepmother were, writes the Gazette, far from harmonious. Through her mother, she possessed what the journal describes as a rather handsome fortune. These particulars outline the circumstances without resolving them: the report reproduces neither the words exchanged within the family circle nor the detailed grounds of this domestic discord.
In the intervening period, M. Bonnebaigt purchased an attorney’s practice in Pamiers and formally sought Mlle Despeyrous’s hand. Her father, who remained ignorant of their secret liaison, returned a categorical refusal, motivated principally by the death of Bonnebaigt’s father, whom the Gazette describes as having “died insane.” The journal also reports that the two young people had agreed to resort to the formal filial summonses known as “actes respectueux” if, upon Mlle Despeyrous coming of age, her father persisted in his opposition. The design thus rested upon a mutual pledge that had not yet endured the trial of physical separation.
Toward the close of 1873, M. Despeyrous sent his daughter to stay with relatives established in Burgundy. After several weeks spent in Gray and Dijon, she arrived at Sénozan, where her maternal grandfather, grandmother, and uncle received her. Toward mid-January, she confided her relations with M. Bonnebaigt to her uncle. The Gazette characterizes this admission as painful and humiliating; these are the chronicler’s words, not a preserved statement from the young woman herself. She subsequently declared that, yielding to her family’s entreaties, she renounced the alliance. She communicated this resolve to her father in Toulouse; M. Lacroix undertook to notify Bonnebaigt, in reply to several letters from the latter.
An earlier letter complicated this intelligence. Dated December 3, 1873, it bade Bonnebaigt rely solely upon Mlle Despeyrous’s own assurances and urged him to proceed with preparations for the nuptials. The young lady attained her majority on January 28. On the following Sunday, Bonnebaigt traveled to Sénozan in order, according to the journal, to learn his fate. The discrepancy between that written letter and her recent resolve had lent hope a tangible form; the uncle’s verbal response was now intended to dismantle it in person.
The Gazette summarizes the encounter in a few terse gestures. M. Lacroix communicated Mlle Despeyrous’s refusal to Bonnebaigt. The latter insisted upon hearing it from her own lips. Having heard it, he refused to withdraw. The chronicler designates his conduct as a “provocation,” yet specifies neither the words uttered nor the movements of those present. Within these narrow limits, the account records the resort to firearms: M. Lacroix, returning from the hunt, discharged his gun at Bonnebaigt. The lead ball shattered his jaw; the journal affirms that he was left entirely disfigured. It does not record who witnessed the scene, nor the precise instant preceding the shot.
The cause was brought before the Court of Assizes of Saône-et-Loire, over which Judge Simonnet presided. The Gazette notes that five sittings—on June 18, 19, 20, 21, and 22—were devoted to the so-called Sénozan affair. The court had ordered the proceedings to be held in camera. The debates therefore commenced behind closed doors, while the letters and depositions were examined away from the public gaze. Following the examination of witnesses, Maître Aulois, counsel for Lacroix, renewed his application that the remainder of the trial proceed in open court. On this occasion, the motion was granted, and the public thronged the chamber. The report does not reconstruct the depositions; it marks merely the threshold at which an audience previously shielded from scrutiny became once more a spectacle.
The civil party, represented by Maître Maritain of the Paris bar, claimed 150,000 francs in damages on M. Bonnebaigt’s behalf. This sum set a judicial valuation upon the injury, without restoring to the victim what the Gazette described as irreparably lost. For his part, Advocate General Poux-Franklin dismissed premeditation and himself requested that mitigating circumstances be extended to Lacroix. The report does not record his arguments. It suffices, however, to distinguish the stance of the public prosecutor from that of the defense: the state did not contend that the assault was prepared in advance, and urged the jurors to find extenuating circumstances.
When proceedings resumed on Sunday, the presiding judge announced that he would put a subsidiary question regarding assault and battery causing an incapacity for labor exceeding twenty days. Maître Aulois then addressed the court. According to the Gazette, he combated the indictment, maintaining that his client’s act had been involuntary, committed in a paroxysm of delirium induced by just grievances, under the sway of family honor, and in response to direct provocation. These were the arguments of counsel, not findings established by the tribunal. The formula united accident, temporary distraction, and the defense of honor; it invited the jury to see in the shooting the consequence of an affront rather than a deliberate criminal act.
The presiding judge summarized the debates. It was nearly eight o’clock in the evening when the jurors returned from their deliberations. Their verdict was negative on every count, including the subsidiary question put to them. The court consequently ordered the immediate discharge of M. Lacroix. The Gazette states that he quitted the hall amid demonstrations of sympathy and affection from numerous friends. This movement of the crowd likewise belongs to the contemporary report; while it in no way altered the operative decree, it reveals the reception the verdict met among the prisoner’s partisans.
The criminal acquittal did not conclude the civil suit. The court condemned Lacroix to pay Bonnebaigt 20,000 francs in damages, one half to be tendered within a fortnight of the judgment’s formal service, the remainder within six months, with interest running from the date of the decree. It further instituted an annuity of 2,400 francs, payable semi-annually in advance; one half of this pension was to revert to Madame Bonnebaigt senior should her son predecease her. The man whom the jury had just set at liberty thus remained debtor to the one whose jaw he had shattered. At Sénozan, the engagement had been severed and the encounter ended by a gunshot; before the tribunal, two distinct adjudications left standing together Lacroix’s acquittal and the debt owed to Bonnebaigt.