The record of Christophe Aubriot’s vows was written upon a single, loose leaf of paper. His worldly possessions, by contrast, occupied a far firmer place in the minds of his family. In order to transfer them to his sister, who had married the son of his guardian, the young man had to remain a religious. He had no desire to do so. The chronicle recounts how this profession of faith was nonetheless wrested from him, and how, more than thirty years after his formal protest before notaries, his children obtained the restitution of their patrimony. Between that scrap of paper and the estate, an entire lifetime had elapsed.
Christophe’s father, Guillaume de Aubriot, Lord of Courfrault, died in September 1623. He had married Edmée de Longueau and left two children, Françoise and Christophe. Champagnac reports that his wife maintained a liaison with a man named Dumourier. The husband’s return, following a prolonged absence, is said to have led the two paramours to resolve upon his death. Dumourier was alleged to have prepared the poison, which Edmée presented to Guillaume as a salutary draught. It was these distinct roles that the prosecution would subsequently lay to their charge before the court of Provins.
Edmée became the guardian of her children. Christophe had been born with an infirmity, the nature of which the record does not further specify. Another kinsman intervened: Jean de Bonneval, the uterine brother of the deceased, who himself had a minor son. In Champagnac’s account, Bonneval suspected precisely what had transpired, but chose to turn the crime to his own profit rather than prosecute its perpetrators. His design combined two maneuvers: Françoise was to marry his son; Christophe would enter a monastery, and his estate would pass to his sister. The patrimony, thus reunited, would redound to the benefit of Bonneval’s son.
The marriage was solemnized. Shortly thereafter, the King’s prosecutor in Provins initiated proceedings against Edmée and Dumourier for Guillaume’s poisoning. Witnesses were examined. The chronicle indicates that both were condemned to be burned alive at the stake, and that neither lodged an appeal. Dumourier underwent the sentence. Edmée, however, escaped with the assistance of her brother-in-law, her daughter, and her son-in-law. Yet this aid brought her no true liberty: Bonneval had provided her shelter within his own house.
There, according to the narrative, he kept her confined in a stable, where she perished of hunger and destitution. This death is related by the chronicler without any record of separate proceedings instituted against Bonneval. The latter, in the intervening time, had secured the guardianship of Christophe following the mother’s condemnation. He thus administered the young man’s estate, while his son’s marriage to Françoise had already accomplished the first part of his design. It remained for him to secure a religious profession that would irrevocably decide the fate of the remaining fortune.
Christophe took the novice’s habit among the canons regular of the Abbey of Saint-Jacques in Provins. Bonneval placed by his side a tutor named Foudreau, charged, according to the chronicle, with persuading him that he possessed a true vocation. Encouragements were mingled with threats. Other uncles endeavored to deliver their nephew from this coercion, to no avail. The young man eventually declared in explicit terms that he would not take his vows. His refusal struck at the very premise upon which all his guardian’s calculations rested: without that solemn engagement, Christophe remained an insuperable obstacle to the coveted transfer of property.
Bonneval summoned him to his country seat near Provins. Following dinner, they walked together in the garden. The scene reported by Champagnac ceases at that juncture to resemble a familial visit: the uncle drew a dagger and threatened to slay his nephew if he did not swear to pronounce his vows on the following day. Christophe yielded. There is no need to repeat the words that the chronicler attributes to the two men to comprehend what he describes: the consent Bonneval required had just been extorted under pain of death.
On the morrow, the account continues, Bonneval led the young man to a tavern and plied him with wine until he was intoxicated. He clothed him in a cassock and surplice, then conducted him to the Abbey of Saint-Jacques, where Christophe publicly pronounced his vows. The instrument was inscribed only upon a loose leaf of paper. The guardian died a few months later. Bonneval’s son appeared thenceforth to hold the estate for which his father had so relentlessly labored; yet the father’s death did not put an end to the pretensions of the kindred. It merely gave rise to new ones.
Christophe’s other uncles brought forward a prior will executed in their favor. Armed with his religious profession, they in turn demanded the execution of that deed. Those who had once sought to deliver him from duress now entered the dispute over the worldly goods. The young man did not confine himself to choosing between the claimants and the possessor: on May 3, 1626, he protested before notaries against his monastic profession and against the deeds of gift that had preceded it. He declared that they had been obtained through violence and coercion. Thereupon he quitted the abbey and cast off the religious habit.
His sister Françoise and her husband pursued him relentlessly. The chronicle attributes their bitterness to the dread of having to restore his lawful portion. Having withdrawn to Orléans, Christophe married a Demoiselle Chevalier, whose family hailed from Berry, and had a child by that union. He subsequently obtained from Rome a papal brief granting dispensation from his vows and legitimizing his child. The contestation of his profession was no longer merely a matter of worldly fortune: it struck at the very standing and legitimacy of the family he had founded after departing from Saint-Jacques.
The legal actions continued. Champagnac attributes Christophe’s physical exhaustion to these persecutions; he assigns no medical cause for his death. Christophe died in late 1647, at the age of thirty-nine. His widow was appointed guardian of their children and persisted in defending their rights. The account, which had initially spoken of but a single child, thenceforth refers to several heirs, without specifying their number. It was not until 1658 that she obtained, according to the chronicler, full justice: Françoise was compelled to restore to her brother’s children all that was rightfully theirs.
The narrative ceases with this restitution. It neither values the goods returned nor tallies the costs swallowed up by decades of litigation. Yet Christophe’s path remains distinctly legible through his acts: a novice’s habit resisted, a profession coerced, a notarial protest, a flight, a marriage, and a brief procured from Rome. After his death, his widow carried forward what he had begun on May 3, 1626. The family that had disposed of his estate under the pretense of determining his sacred calling was ultimately compelled to surrender the inheritance; the young man of the loose leaf was no longer there to receive it.