“At noon, did you meet your child upon the Pont-Neuf?” Madame Castanier asked her husband.
“Yes.”
“Did you take her by the hand? Did you bring her home? Did you give her bread?”
Castanier answered in the affirmative to every inquiry. Then his wife demanded: “And what became of her thereafter?” He was struck dumb. She bade him go search for her. He asked where. A few hours earlier, the widow Bouche had observed the father and his little girl walking together through the streets of Carpentras; the child was weeping, and the witness had called out to the father, urging him to wait for her.
It was the 16th of January, 1827. The little girl had just vanished. Champagnac portrays her as beloved by her parents and the entire neighbourhood. It was initially presumed that she had lost her way in the town. That evening, the widow Bouche returned to the Castanier household to inquire whether she had been found. Husband and wife sat on either side of the stove; the witness took a seat between them.
Presently, the child’s body was recovered from the Cirque well, a stone fastened to her neck and two knife wounds upon her person. The judicial authorities proceeded to Castanier’s lodging alongside the examining magistrate. The man lay fully clothed upon his bed; as he rose, he cried out: “I have no child anymore!” According to the chronicle, he was unaware that the body had just been discovered.
The knife was identified by Madame Castanier as belonging to her husband. The stone was likewise recognised: the woman acknowledged that it had been removed from the foot of the staircase leading to her bedchamber. It was carried back to the place whence it had been taken; its contours fitted precisely into the void left behind. These articles, the depositions of witnesses, and the recollection of the encounter upon the Pont-Neuf led to Castanier’s arrest.
The man had not always passed his days in prayer. At Camaret, the chronicle portrays him as a gamester and a frequenter of taverns; having removed to Orange, certain pious souls undertook his conversion. Later, at Carpentras, he would spend long hours within the church, surrounding himself with devotional volumes. When his wife spoke to him of the necessity of labour, he replied only with religious ejaculations. It was whispered that he dreamed of hell and the devil, and that he would rise in the dead of night to pray. Champagnac writes that, following this transformation, Castanier soon came to be regarded as a holy man. These habits would be recounted at the trial, where all sought to decipher their bearing upon the deed laid to his charge.
On the 8th of May, Castanier appeared before the Assize Court of Vaucluse. The eyes of the public were fixed upon his countenance, searching, according to Champagnac, for the marks of that dementia invoked to explain the crime. He was described as gaunt, seeming entirely foreign to the proceedings around him. The accused appeared to move his lips in silence; some believed he was reciting prayers.
When the presiding judge inquired of his name, Castanier at first made no answer. A gendarme nudged him; questioned a second time, he stated his name was Castanier. He replied “here” when asked his place of residence, then affirmed that he dwelt in Orange. He could not recall his age. His advocate, Maître Bourdon, explained that the sole explicit reply he had been able to elicit regarded his defence: Castanier had declared that God would defend him. The prisoner then reiterated with vehemence: “I desire no defender; I have no need of one.”
The president asked if he wished to be judged. “As God wills,” he replied. When asked if he was mad, he said he knew not. To the question: “Did you kill your child?”, he answered: “I have never done harm to my own blood.” During the depositions, he fell asleep; awakened abruptly, he laughed, according to the chronicle, “after the manner of a simpleton.”
He was interrogated regarding his actions on the 16th of January, between the hours of ten and two. He answered that he had gone to church, yet could furnish no further precision. When asked if he loved his daughter, he said: “Poor little thing!” The president asked anew whether he had slain her. Castanier sobbed, averted his head, and at length uttered: “It is a great misfortune!” A juror put the selfsame question to him. Castanier replied that he possessed no sense. He was exhorted not to fear confession, having perhaps acted without evil intent; he retorted that he would depart if he were questioned further. The King’s prosecutor inquired whether he repented of having killed the child. After a few moments, Castanier buried his head in his hands: since his daughter’s death, he said, his head had ached; it had ached beforehand as well. François Bouche, summoned to the bar, was beginning his testimony when Castanier interrupted him to offer a greeting as though he had just awakened: “Ah! Good day, Bouche!” Another witness testified to having seen him prostrate for hours within the church. Castanier cried out that he had once remained there for nine hours, that he took great delight in being there, and that he wished to return.
The president asked him once more whether, in killing his daughter, he believed he was sending her to heaven. He replied that he was not listening. His answers formed no coherent narrative; each returned the jurors to disjointed fragments: the bread given after the encounter, the hours spent in church, his love for the child, and then that cry of misfortune. The defence and the prosecution rested upon these very same utterances to sustain opposing conclusions.
The King’s prosecutor declared that he had established the prisoner’s guilt, yet did not believe he had acted with discernment. His moral condition, in his view, warranted the dismissal of premeditation. Maître Bourdon, for his part, urged the indications of insanity and his client’s demeanour throughout the hearings. In this trial, the prosecution sought not merely the identification of the author of the homicide; the manner in which the jury was to qualify the act remained the subject of dispute.
Following a brief deliberation, the jury declared Castanier guilty, but without premeditation. The court sentenced him to hard labour for life.