The husbandman François Fert had prised his cart from a rut and resumed the road toward Commercy. He had seen Étienne Psaume walking ahead of him upon the hill of Boucq; half an hour later, swallowed by the mist, the man was no longer visible. An aged passer-by whom Psaume had overtaken along the lane recounted that he had subsequently heard cries, then a voice pleading for mercy, to which another answered: “No mercy!” When Psaume was found, his watch had vanished. The hill, the mist, and the stoppage of the cart were soon to furnish the elements of narratives that no inquiry could ever bring into concordance.
Psaume was an advocate, a man of letters, and a bibliographer, held in high esteem for his probity and obliging nature. From his first marriage to Jeanne Picquot, he had three daughters. Stéphanie-Cornélie, the eldest, married Pierre-Charles Simon and died in 1824, leaving three young children behind her. His second wife, Jeanne Lemoussu, deserted the conjugal roof to dwell in the household of Jean-Claude Cabouat, the father of Étienne-Adolphe Cabouat, who was himself the husband of Élisabeth-Stéphanie, Psaume’s daughter. The two sons-in-law were thus lodged at the very heart of a fractured house.
Psaume refused to believe that the boy born two years after Jeanne’s departure was his own, and sought to disinherit him entirely. He laid the blame for all his domestic miseries upon his second wife. At the beginning of 1828, he quitted Commercy for Nancy. At Boucq, he shared with Simon the produce of a wine-press, in accordance with the testamentary dispositions of his deceased daughter Stéphanie-Cornélie. The inheritance rights and the legal guardianship of the three grandchildren had already provoked several lawsuits between the two men.
The grape-harvest of 1828 revived these animosities. According to words recorded by Champagnac, Simon denounced Psaume as a thief of testaments and threatened to drive him into the earth; Psaume, for his part, held Simon answerable for his daughter’s torments and demise. Étienne-Adolphe Cabouat, Psaume’s other son-in-law, was likewise embroiled in bitter strife with him. His wife Élisabeth-Stéphanie had abandoned the marital home to seek refuge with her father. In a missive dated September 23, Cabouat reproached Psaume for his bitter utterances, warning that he would not suffer them for long.
On October 20, Psaume’s vintage began. He lodged at the inn kept by Charles-Joseph Merdier, who also served as the village tobacconist. A week later, on the morning of Monday, October 27, Fert arrived to fetch him at six o’clock. The carter was tasked with transporting two wine casks and Psaume’s travelling trunk. The servant-maid told him to proceed on his way, as Psaume had not yet risen, promising she would apprise him without delay. Psaume hastened to catch him, but Merdier urged him first to swallow a cup of coffee: by taking the direct path up the steep hill, he would easily overtake the wagon, which was obliged to follow the highway.
Psaume quitted the inn at about half-past six. Merdier and his servant remarked that he carried a watch upon his person. He took the steep shortcut; Fert drove his team along the main road. Halfway up the incline, one of the wheels sank deep into a mire. Fert was compelled to solicit the aid of wayfarers. At that juncture, Psaume was still visible, some hundred and fifteen paces ahead. When the wagon was finally set in motion once more, roughly half an hour having elapsed, the carter could see him no longer.
Through the fog, a woman caught sight of a figure she took to be Psaume, and then observed the carter gain the summit and move on; she heard seven o’clock strike. An elderly man related that Psaume had overtaken him, only to be lost from view within the Hazois woods. He asserted that he had heard cries, then a voice begging for quarter and another answering: “No mercy!” Terrified that he might himself be dispatched, the old man crawled upon his hands and knees through the undergrowth toward a ditch before turning back toward Boucq.
Toward ten o’clock, another traveller noticed traces of blood along the track through the Hazois woods, taking it at first for that of a hare. Fert pressed on, inquiring after Psaume along the way without obtaining any reassuring intelligence. He reached Commercy near eleven, solitary with his casks and the trunk. The disappearance soon aroused dark suspicions against the two sons-in-law, though the earliest searches conducted through the countryside yielded nothing.
On November 15, a general battue discovered the corpse in the woods, half a league from Merdier’s inn and seventeen paces from the cart-track. Psaume lay upon his back behind a hedge. His cloak and waistcoat were thrust back beneath his body; his trousers were rolled up to the knees and smeared with mire; only a single shoe remained upon his feet. The watch had disappeared, yet his pockets still contained loose coins, spectacles, a purse, a book, keys, and a letter from his daughter Ranxin. The missing shoe, together with his hat, cane, and umbrella, lay hard by the body.
On November 23, Delacroix and Louis Thomas found a second cudgel of hornbeam hidden beneath dead leaves, with hairs still clinging to its extremity. A first club had already been seized. Simon was then working a timber-cutting in the Hazois; according to the chronicle, it was the only clearing in the neighborhood where charcoal-wood was then being prepared.
The surgeons examined the remains on three occasions, on November 15 and 16. The head bore numerous grievous lesions; coagulated blood filled the hair about the ears. Once death had been judicially established, the magistrates turned their scrutiny upon the family feuds and the movements of Simon and Cabouat.
The woodcutter Rémy Bresseaux came forward to declare that the Cabouats had offered him two hundred francs to slay Psaume. Étienne-Adolphe, he alleged, had pointed out the road his father-in-law took, and the elder Cabouat had remarked that the old man’s sight was poor; Madame Cabouat had reportedly interrupted their colloquy. Bresseaux claimed he had spoken of this proposition prior to the murder. Champagnac notes, however, that this story, passed from mouth to mouth, may well have been altered in the telling.
Both sons-in-law were apprehended: Simon at Sorcy on November 15, Cabouat the following day at Pierrefitte. At first, Simon insisted that the design had merely been to administer a chastisement to Psaume. He protested that he had remained twenty-five paces distant in the thicket, accusing Cabouat of having wrought the entire deed. Cabouat, for his part, denied having gone to Boucq at all and set up an alibi. At the trial, each prisoner was to ascribe to the other a different station in the wood, a different moment for the assault, and an entirely different share in Psaume’s destruction.
The proceedings opened on July 8, 1829, before the Court of Assizes of the Meuse, sitting at Saint-Mihiel. One hundred and eighty witnesses had been subpoenaed, sixty of them for the defense. While the indictment was being read, Simon stood up to disclose that Cabouat had approached him under the assumed name of Marchal, proposing to give their father-in-law “a sound thrashing.” Simon insisted he had declined. On the morning of October 27, he claimed, Cabouat had gone to Merdier’s inn to ascertain whether Psaume had departed, after which they took separate paths. Simon followed the high road; when he rejoined Cabouat, the latter informed him that Psaume was dead.
Simon admitted to having helped Cabouat drag the corpse into a hedge, and declared he had cast the watch into the water. He averred that Cabouat had threatened to denounce him if he dared to speak. Cabouat maintained his denial of having ever been in Boucq, declaring that Simon lied. Under Simon’s version, he had merely helped conceal the crime, but the fatal blows were struck by Cabouat alone.
The depositions confirmed several facts already brought to light. Bresseaux repeated his accusation; Cabouat held fast to his alibi. The Tabutiaux family, having initially recanted their statements, now testified in support of Simon’s revelation. These fluctuating testimonies further obscured the truth regarding the striking of the blows and the assistance rendered after the slaughter. The public prosecutor observed that Simon had displayed marked foresight in concealing the crime, and hinted at accomplices who yet walked free.
On July 11, after three days of deliberation and debate, the jury returned a verdict finding Cabouat guilty as principal in the assassination, and Simon guilty as an accomplice. Upon the reading of the verdict, Cabouat turned pale and wept. Simon, maintaining a firmer demeanor, protested: “Yet I am innocent!” Cabouat declared he would not lodge an appeal. Soon, however, both men altered their resolve, lodging pleas in cassation and petitioning royal clemency to have their capital sentences commuted to perpetual hard labor.
On July 15, they summoned the President of the Assize Court to the prison, professing a desire to reveal the complicity of the elder Cabouat and Psaume’s second wife. Simon acknowledged his own guilt, yet insisted he had dealt no blow: he had merely assisted in hauling the body away after Cabouat had struck the victim down with a stone. He charged Psaume’s wife with having instigated the crime for five years past. Thereupon, seized by a violent fit of epilepsy, he collapsed at the magistrate’s feet.
Recovering from a severe nervous seizure, Cabouat in turn confessed to having struck the opening blows. According to his account, Simon then came up brandishing a cudgel and finished Psaume, who was still breathing. He likewise accused Psaume’s wife of having incited the murder. Thus, even in their confessions, the two men agreed neither upon Simon’s role during the assault nor upon his actions over the dying man.
On September 13, the decree rejecting their petitions arrived at Saint-Mihiel. On the eve of the execution, both men formally retracted their accusations against the elder Cabouat and Psaume’s second wife. Cabouat named Simon as the sole instigator of the plot. On September 14, 1829, both men were led to the scaffold at Saint-Mihiel. Simon, half dead with terror, had to be carried up the steps. Cabouat cried out to the youth in the crowd to pity him and take warning from his fate; the falling blade severed his voice before he could finish uttering his mother’s name.