According to the bill of indictment, a promissory note for twenty thousand francs bore the endorsement of Fourcade upon its reverse. Yet he had neither drawn nor endorsed it. The formal protest apprised him that the paper had matured; an examination of the bill revealed that his name had been forged. He sought out first Richard, one of the endorsers, and then Desroches, for whom Richard was said to be a mere intermediary. Fourcade’s complaint was soon to bring all three men before the Seine Assize Court.
The trial opened on June 22, 1874. Napoléon-Alcibiade-Sophie Richard, a business agent, took his place alongside Constantin-Michel-Eugène Rigaud, Desroches’s cashier, and Paul-André Desroches, an engineer and railway contractor. The Gazette des Tribunaux reported that the case turned solely upon the forgery of commercial paper. Desroches, having been declared bankrupt, was to answer separately before the correctional court for simple bankruptcy; the edition of June 24 corrected an earlier erroneous mention of fraudulent bankruptcy.
The indictment traced the investigation back to the preceding autumn. It recounted that Fourcade, having received the protest of a twenty-thousand-franc note, had recognized his forged signature. Other bills, valued by the prosecution at two hundred and thirty thousand francs, likewise bore his name. All three defendants were arrested. Yet their liabilities, far from being identical, were already fiercely contested in their depositions: Richard confessed to having fabricated the bills, maintaining that Rigaud and Desroches had led him into it. The latter two insisted they had been entirely ignorant of the paper's criminal origin.
The report of the proceedings distinguished three successive series of notes. The first was described as comprising drafts drawn under imaginary names, then endorsed down to Fourcade and Richard. According to the indictment, twenty-nine thousand francs were discounted; Richard remitted only fifteen thousand to Desroches and Rigaud, retaining fourteen thousand for himself. The court expert, however, spoke of thirteen thousand francs paid to Rigaud and fourteen thousand remaining due to Desroches: the newspaper’s two accounting tallies do not agree, rendering an exact reconstruction of the cash flow impossible. To represent the sum he claimed to be holding back, Richard signed other notes and handed them over without placing them in circulation. This debt, the prosecution added, placed him thenceforth at the mercy of his two associates.
The second series comprised four drafts and four promissory notes, valued at eighty thousand francs. Fictitious names appeared as drawers or payees; Fourcade featured among the endorsers, and the paper passed through Richard before being negotiated by Desroches or Rigaud. The court record indicated that these bills had been honored at maturity by the two men and subsequently recovered among Desroches’s private papers, who was said to have preserved them as cash vouchers.
The third series, valued by the journal at one hundred and thirty-two thousand one hundred and eighty-five francs, remained unpaid. These bills likewise bore imaginary names alongside Fourcade’s signature. One exception, however, complicated the picture: three notes of ten thousand francs each had been drawn by Desparjols, a contractor and friend of Desroches, who had reportedly lent his signature as an accommodation. The prosecution distinguished these instruments from the rest, observing that they bore, in its view, only two forged signatures. It presented the successive series as the escalating stages of a practice that had broadened as the maturities drew inexorably near.
Richard made no attempt to disown his own hand. Questioned regarding his business agency and his dealings with Desroches, he explained that he had initially received accommodation paper, and had subsequently fabricated drafts at the behest of his associates. He maintained that he had put his faith in the railway concessions and grand enterprises of which Rigaud spoke. Desroches, he asserted, lived in lavish style; Rigaud continually promised him that funds would be at hand when the bills fell due. Richard contended that he had yielded to Rigaud’s repeated entreaties before sinking hopelessly into the very machinery he had himself constructed.
The presiding judge reminded him that he had formerly served as a solicitor’s and bailiff’s clerk, and could not have been blind to the gravity of his actions. Richard answered that he had begun with fictitious drafts, trusting that Desroches would honor them. He acknowledged that every fabricated bill was in his own handwriting, save for the alterations introduced by his associates. He asserted, however, that he had negotiated only the first series; Rigaud, he insisted, had taken charge of the remainder. Thus his confession bore the seeds of an accusation: Richard admitted the fabrication while disputing the overarching role his co-defendants assigned to him.
Rigaud protested. He acknowledged having circulated the paper, but insisted he had believed them to be ordinary accommodation notes, payable upon maturity. He denied that his correspondence proved any awareness of the forgeries. The presiding judge confronted him with letters in which Rigaud spoke of securities to be remitted, funds to be procured, and commissions to be had; he noted further that, in one missive, Rigaud had advised against presenting certain bills to a particular banker. Rigaud countered that he had never requested Richard to manufacture forged instruments, and that the shifting tone of his correspondence was merely the consequence of their frequent dealings.
The examination then brought the court back to the affairs of Desroches. The engineer recounted his undertakings in Russia, his railway enterprises, and the concessions he claimed to have secured. He admitted that his finances were strained, but maintained that he still commanded open lines of credit and momentous prospects. The prosecution met this with liabilities amounting to four and a half million francs against assets which, according to the bankruptcy trustee, did not exceed two millions. Desroches replied that this valuation overlooked his concessions and his pending enterprises.
The trustee, Barboux, and the court expert, Flory, delivered their own statement of the accounts: three million three hundred thousand francs in liabilities, and six hundred thousand in assets. They described deficient ledgers, exorbitant expenditures, and an overwhelming reliance on accommodation paper. Flory placed the inception of the forged instruments in late 1872; he testified that Richard filled in blank acceptances with imaginary or counterfeited signatures. In the expert’s judgment, Rigaud could not have been ignorant of the forgeries he received and negotiated, while the signature of Fourcade ought to have alerted Desroches, who had previously solicited a loan from the manufacturer only to be rebuffed. These conclusions were contested by the accused, who steadfastly denied any knowledge of the fraud.
The trial was not confined solely to the trustee’s balance sheets. The presiding judge interrogated Desroches concerning locomotives and rails purchased on credit, loans contracted at usurious rates, and speculative ventures into which he had plunged vast sums. Desroches maintained that he did not busy himself with financial minutiae and borrowed solely upon his standing. Regarding a government bond entrusted by Belleville, which Rigaud had caused to be negotiated, he claimed to have believed it a simple loan and disclaimed all knowledge of the stock market maneuver that followed. The judge reminded him that the security had been repurchased for forward delivery and subsequently lost to its owner; Desroches insisted he had not understood the import of the transaction.
Fourcade was heard as a witness. The judge examined him regarding his commercial ties with Desroches and a proposal for a railway concession that he had transmitted. Fourcade admitted to having acted with undue levity in these relations, but rejected with indignation the suggestion that he had known the drafts to be forged. He explained that he had placed his trust in Desroches and had grasped the truth only after the catastrophe had fallen. When Richard accused him of having himself counseled the use of his signature, Fourcade vehemently protested; the summary of the hearing does not record how the jury weighed this altercation.
Tenré, a banker and creditor of Desroches, testified in his turn. He had participated in certain ventures and acknowledged that an offer of six hundred thousand francs had been tendered for a railway concession, though Desroches had declined to grant him power of attorney to conclude the transaction. Tenré also conceded that he had been imprudent in his financial relations with the engineer. Yet he denied all knowledge of the forged notes. When Richard’s counsel asked whether he knew the drafts were fraudulent, Tenré replied that the revelation had caused him to start in horror. Galetti, Desroches’s nephew and clerk, stated that he had signed certain drafts by procuration, while maintaining that he had remained entirely aloof from the financial maneuvers.
At the session of June 23, witnesses called by the defense spoke to the probity and commercial honor of Desroches. General Tamisier related that they had settled an industrial dispute in three brief conferences, and that he retained an untarnished opinion of him. Past five o’clock, the list of witnesses was exhausted. The public prosecutor requested an adjournment so that the closing arguments might proceed without interruption; the court suspended the sitting and resumed the trial on the morrow.
On June 24, Advocate General Hémar addressed the court for the prosecution. Thomas defended Richard, Arago pleaded for Desroches, and Martin spoke for Rigaud. Following the judge’s summing-up, the jury deliberated until twenty-five minutes past midnight. Their verdict was negative regarding Desroches and Rigaud, and affirmative regarding Richard, though according him the benefit of extenuating circumstances. The former two were acquitted. Richard was sentenced to seven years of solitary confinement and a fine of one hundred francs.
The judicial record thus left behind two irreconcilable narratives of the very same circulation of paper. Richard had confessed to manufacturing the bills, yet he pointed to Rigaud and Desroches as the instigators who had driven him on; they, in turn, denied ever knowing of the forgeries. The acquittal of Desroches and Rigaud resolved the legal question chronicled in these columns, while Richard’s punishment measured the guilt the jury found against him. The drafts had not merely borne forged signatures: they had brought three men before the bar of justice, each attributing to the other the fatal, discerning knowledge of the crime.