On February 4, 1830, the tax collector Saunier was pursuing his customary rounds on horseback when he caught sight of the curé Frilay. He called out to him regarding a previous encounter, in the course of which he had accused the priest of threatening him with a pistol. Frilay drew a weapon, Saunier advanced brandishing his walking stick, and two shots were fired without taking effect. The stick shattered. Frilay then drew a dagger and wounded Saunier in the flank. The collector managed to return home and lodged a formal complaint two days later. Before the Court of Assizes, Frilay was to contend that he had merely defended his own life; yet witnesses and earlier correspondence would reveal that this roadside encounter was merely the culmination of a protracted prelude.
Louis Frilay, a native of Rouen ordained to the priesthood in 1817, had previously been transferred following reprimands regarding his conduct in two successive parishes. Early in 1825, he was appointed curate of Saint-Aubin-sur-Scie and Sauqueville. He formed an acquaintance with the tax collector Saunier and soon entered into an adulterous intrigue with his wife. Several months elapsed. Saunier began to suspect what was afoot and sought pretexts to forbid the priest entry to his house. Frilay nevertheless persisted in visiting whenever the husband was absent.
On January 11, 1829, Saunier returned home unexpectedly upon hearing voices. He found his wife alone, yet remained convinced that another person had just been speaking. He searched the premises and discovered Frilay concealed in the attic, hidden behind trusses of hay. The husband contained his fury and demanded that the curate acknowledge the outrage and formally pledge to quit the district. He insisted that this undertaking be set down in writing and signed. Frilay complied, while reserving the intention, according to Champagnac, of failing to honour his word.
The first confrontation recounted thereafter occurred at Manchouville, along a road where Saunier was overseeing day labourers. The chronicler dates this meeting to November 23, 1829; in his letter to the royal prosecutor, dated January 22, Frilay placed the incident on November 22. The collector, on horseback, held a riding whip; Frilay was on foot. Saunier declared his intention to strike him. Frilay struck the horse with a cane from which a concealed point protruded, then fled into a wheat field. Saunier pursued him. Frilay levelled a pistol and demanded to know what was held against him. Saunier retorted that he had not quitted the countryside as promised. Frilay replied that Saunier ought to have petitioned for his transfer himself. They parted without further immediate consequence.
Between the signed undertaking and this encounter, visits to the house had been formally prohibited, yet the liaison did not cease. Madame Saunier stated that she had endeavoured to turn Frilay away, but that he persistently returned. She was able to warn him with prearranged signals and knew he was well aware of her husband’s collection days. She also conceded that, even after learning of the November confrontation, she had continued to meet him at Bernier’s dwelling. In these depositions, the affair is measured less by any single incident than by recurring rendezvous, letters entrusted to third parties, and repeated attempts to sever an intimacy that lingered despite the refusals she professed at the trial.
On the following January 22, Frilay addressed a letter to the king’s prosecutor. He recalled this encounter, exaggerating Saunier’s threats according to the chronicle, and insisted that he could no longer walk abroad unarmed. He claimed to foresee a terrible misfortune, while affirming that he would resort to his weapons only in the direst extremity. Another letter, dated January 1 and addressed to Fiquet, Madame Saunier’s brother, contained invectives against the collector and laid at his door the death of the stillborn child delivered by his wife on December 10. This accusation was Frilay’s alone; the archival chapter offers no substantiation for it.
On February 4, Saunier was once more riding his customary route to collect taxes. Near the rise of Saint-Aubin, he saw Frilay quicken his pace. He overtook him and reminded him of the pistol drawn during their previous meeting. Frilay pulled out his weapon. Saunier pressed forward with his heavy stick, but the discharges missed their mark; one ball grazed the horse’s thigh. The stick snapped as it struck Frilay. The priest then unsheathed the dagger he carried concealed beneath his cassock, seized Saunier by the cloak, and struck him repeatedly. The wound to the left flank was deep. Saunier warned him that he would lay an information before the king’s prosecutor. Frilay answered that it would be the worse for him, and strode off. Saunier made his way back to his dwelling.
The tax collector lodged his formal deposition on February 6. The preliminary inquiry compared the various accounts he furnished of the encounter; Champagnac describes them as differing slightly in detail, yet consistent on all essential points. Frilay maintained that Saunier had attacked first and that he had merely defended his person. The curate was committed for trial before the Court of Assizes of the Seine-Inférieure, where proceedings opened on May 15, 1830.
Madame Saunier appeared as a witness. She acknowledged her liaison with Frilay, though she framed the initiative and any coercion within a narrative markedly different from that of the accused. She declared that her husband addressed her with stern reproaches, but had never subjected her to ill treatment. She denied ever having wished to drown herself, and refuted the notion that Frilay had come to console her in his pastoral capacity. She conceded that she occasionally made signals to indicate when he might visit, that she wrote to him from time to time, and that he had continued to importune her. She likewise confirmed that Saunier had forbidden the priest from crossing his threshold.
The presiding judge’s interrogations brought to light the clandestine interviews at Bernier’s, where Frilay requested to see Madame Saunier. She recalled three or four such meetings, only one of which took place after her confinement. She explained that she went thither solely to tell him it must be the last time, and acknowledged that Frilay repeatedly renewed his entreaties. Asked whether she had stood in terror of his threats, she answered that she knew she ought not to have been afraid. Her admissions did not reduce the liaison to an unreserved consent; nor did they, by mere deduction, establish Saunier as the aggressor in the violence of February 4.
The trial could neither obliterate the episode in the hayloft, nor the written pledge, nor the divergent accounts of the November encounter, nor the words exchanged along the roadside. Yet its sole duty was to rule upon the crime under indictment: the attempted murder of February 4. The public prosecutor pressed the charge while taking care, according to the chronicler, to separate Frilay’s criminal conduct from the sacerdotal character he bore. The defence maintained its plea of lawful self-defence. By seven votes to five, the jury pronounced Frilay guilty. The bench joined with the jury’s majority and sentenced him to hard labour for life, the pillory, and branding with the letters T. P. The chapter notes that he received the judgment without visible emotion; it does not record whether the sentence was executed.
In this affair, the letters and depositions rarely tell the same tale. Frilay portrayed Saunier as the assailant; Saunier laid his complaint only after sustaining a wound that had not halted his journey home. Madame Saunier corroborated the adulterous liaison and Frilay’s advances, but was absent from the confrontation of February 4. The jury resolved only the question of attempted murder. The life sentence and the corporal penalties decreed form the conclusion recorded by the source; it leaves unmentioned both the execution of his punishment and the ultimate demise of Saunier.