At two o'clock in the morning, the crowd departed the courthouse in a state of profound agitation. A few moments earlier, the jury had pronounced Firmin Pradal guilty of parricide, while granting him the benefit of extenuating circumstances. The court sentenced him to penal servitude for life. The young man, who had until then preserved an impassive countenance, burst into tears. From the opening of the proceedings, he had insisted that his mother met her end in an accidental fall. A wound discovered only after her burial had given this explanation an entirely different complexion.
The widow Pradal was sixty-eight years of age. For a decade, she had dwelt with Firmin, the younger of her two children, in a dwelling in Ville, within the commune of Aubenas. Her daughter Victorine had married a husbandman of Saint-Privat. Toward the close of September 1872, a fourteen-year-old lad, Charles Mortier, had entered the household to serve as a shepherd boy, sleeping in the hayloft above the stable.
At the hearing, the presiding judge ordered the indictment to be read. It depicted a mother who had favoured her son, and a son who failed to reciprocate that devotion. A testament drawn up at Aubenas on the 7th of April, 1871, had bequeathed to him, by way of preciput, one-third of his mother’s estate. The indictment asserted that Firmin had been apprised of this bounty for months, yet his conduct had grown no milder for it. The neighbours, it was alleged, had overheard the reproaches and witnessed the scenes that ensued. These judgments were the fabric of the prosecution; the trial had yet to put them to the proof.
The same instrument portrayed a man of violent temper, accustomed to drinking spirits and entertaining companions in his mother’s absence. It further imputed to him a design of marriage with a young woman named Maurel, an alliance viewed with disfavour by the widow. One occurrence, recounted by witnesses and corroborated by the Debird couple, had made a particular impression upon the vicinity: following an altercation during the silkworm season of 1872, the mother had fled to their hearth, seeking refuge for eight days. The chronicle does not transmute these testimonies into a formal diagnosis; it merely demonstrates that before her decease, several persons were privy to the terror and strife that reigned within that house.
The days preceding the widow’s death remained less distinct than the court might have wished. She had departed to visit her daughter at Saint-Privat, remaining there overnight. The surviving accounts disagree as to the hour of her return: the judicial summary mentions her departure from her daughter’s abode around midnight, whereas the account attributed to Firmin places his mother’s fall in the afternoon of the following day. Precise reckoning by the clock is thus wanting where it would be of the greatest moment. What is certain is that her return was expected, and that her son subsequently declared he had found her dead.
His initial explanation was that of a fall. According to what he related to the neighbours, he had laid down to rest after carousing with companions when his mother returned. He claimed to have unlatched the door for her before returning to his bed. Later, groans were said to have summoned him outside. He asserted that he found her at the foot of the stairs, lying on her side, powerless to rise. He reportedly carried her to her bed, then went forth to assist in penning the flock. He reportedly brought her a glass of water, and she uttered no complaint. The shepherd boy supped alone and shared his bed. In the morning, Firmin reportedly believed at first that his mother was still alive, discovering her demise only when he sought to address her.
On the morrow, he hastened to the neighbours to announce her decease. The village women came to assist in laying out the departed and to keep watch over the body. The burial took place after the statutory forty-eight-hour delay imposed by the mayor. Yet the tale of an accident did not satisfy all minds. Suspicion ran through the countryside and reached the police commissioner of Aubenas, who communicated with the public prosecutor’s office. Firmin was detained at the magistrates’ disposal.
The exhumation, performed on the 14th of December, altered the course of the affair. Upon opening the coffin, the physicians discovered in the left flank a deep wound, from which blood had flowed copiously. The practitioner who examined the remains concluded that it could not have resulted from a fall: an edged instrument had penetrated some fifteen centimetres. Hitherto, Firmin had breathed no word of this injury. He averted his gaze when it was laid bare, and then answered: “It was not I. I know not how such a thing could have come to pass.”
The wound rendered the story of the staircase untenable; the discrepancies in his own successive narrations undermined it still further. He had not remained consistent as to the hour of his mother’s return, nor as to the moment he found her. He maintained she had cried out for succour, whereas persons living close by declared they had heard nothing prior to his lifting her. He explained that she had undressed herself without shedding blood, though the bedclothes were stained. This was not a scene the journal could reconstitute from within; it was a succession of propositions, confronted with medical findings and the testimony of witnesses.
A further circumstance was debated concerning the hours preceding the widow’s return. A travelling hawker, the woman Rouvière, had been at the Pradal house while he was drinking with his companions; she had lingered after their departure and reportedly took her leave just as the mother arrived. Witnesses, among them the farmers Comte and Gibaud, spoke of this visit. The widow, it was suggested, had expressed anger upon finding her son in such company. The motive remained an inference of the brief, not a certitude extracted from a confession at the bar.
The indictment revived, moreover, an old rumour regarding Firmin’s father, who had died after receiving a blow from a stone. It noted, however, that the event was too remote in time to support a prosecution: Firmin would have been less than sixteen years of age, and the elements necessary for an inquiry had become unrecoverable. Mention of this history might darken the portrait painted by the prosecution, but it proved nothing regarding the mother’s death. The report also cited a recent conviction for insults and threats against the gendarmerie, introduced likewise by way of context.
The victim’s garments were laid before the court. Firmin entered clad in black, pale and silent. Deputy Prosecutor Dormand represented the Crown; Maître de Lagarde, of the Privas bar, appeared for the defence. The interrogation failed to shake the prisoner’s denial. The witnesses heard and the medical men—Dr Dessus of Aubenas and Dr Nier of Privas—confirmed on behalf of the prosecution that death had been occasioned by a wound inflicted with a sharp weapon.
The Deputy Prosecutor called upon the jury to find the prisoner guilty of parricide. At nine o’clock in the evening, following an adjournment, he recapitulated the domestic strife of the household and the weight of evidence marshalled against the accused. Maître de Lagarde offered a measured reply. The preliminary investigation, he urged, had not dispelled the cloud of mystery; he besought the jury not to embrace the most rigorous outcome, and solicited a subsidiary question: that of wilful acts of violence resulting in death without intent to kill. After sharp rejoinders, the court resolved to lay this alternative before the jury as well.
At midnight, the presiding judge summed up the debates. At one o’clock, the jurors retired. Three-quarters of an hour later, they returned an affirmative verdict to the principal question of parricide, while according extenuating circumstances. The subsidiary question did not displace their finding. The sentence pronounced was that of penal servitude for life.
The chronicle closes upon Firmin’s weeping and the hour of two in the morning. It supplies no name for any weapon, reconstructs no fatal stroke, and tenders no definitive scene of the murder. It leaves to the law what it was able to decide, and to the record its own limitations: a mother found dead, a wound irreconcilable with the alleged fall, shifting narrations, and ultimately a conviction for parricide. The rest abides in that shadow where the trial, despite its witnesses, could shed no further certainty.