He had no surname to his name. The Gazette calls him Antoine, a natural son, native to Bar-sur-Aube, scarcely out of childhood when his trial came to pass; and the public prosecutor who related the affair found it himself “piquant in its singularity.” He took it apart count by count, with a scrupulous care that did him honor.
In the autumn of 1788, Antoine was twelve years old. From the premises of the Sieur Piot, a chamois-dresser, he purloined a lambskin and a polecat pelt, which he went to hawk to another dealer, the widow Haumonté. A suspicious customer held back the lambskin; Piot recognized it. Antoine, moreover, made full confession. That particular theft, remarked the prosecutor, could give no manner of rise to doubt.
As for the Marolles cheese lifted from a grocer’s shop, the matter stood otherwise: the shopkeeper declared he had made him return it, while the child swore he had eaten it. The facts did not align; the prosecutor set that charge aside. As for the poor-box in the chapel of Sainte-Reine, within the church of Saint-Pierre, two young girls had seen a boy of thirteen or fourteen passing by, and one had caught sight of Antoine washing bloodstained hands in a brook; yet at the confrontation, they could no longer affirm that it was he. Antoine, for his part, related that he had kept watch while a comrade forced the box: thirteen sous in all, seven for the other lad, six for himself. A vehement suspicion, the prosecutor concluded, yet no proof.
There remained the final count, the one that secured his conviction. And this time, it was the child himself who supplied every detail.
On the 21st of April, 1789, around the noon hour, he entered the church of Saint-Maclou, prised open with the handle of his pocketknife the padlock securing the alms box’s iron hoop, carried the lock off, and hid it beneath a stone in the ditch near the Porte d’Aube. That evening, toward five o'clock, he returned, concealing himself in a confessional. Later in the night, he went in search of a tool; clambering over the locked wicket of the organ loft, he discovered an iron-tipped stave beside the case, clambered down again, and fetched from the choir an iron dowel used for mounting candlesticks, together with an oil lamp to light his way. Close by the box, the flame guttered out; he set it upon the floor, the oil spilt; he righted it and placed it upon a pew.
The alms box would not yield. And so the boy gave up, lay down upon a bench, and fell asleep to pass the night.
He woke around five in the morning, found himself too exposed to view, and slipped back to hide within the confessional. It was there that a canon came upon him. Antoine asked for nothing better than to be on his way; they barred his path. A fourteen-year-old boy, young Naudin, laid hands upon him; he was hauled before the King’s prosecutor, then before the magistrate, who escorted him back into the church to inspect the break-in. He confessed, and would ever confess, that he was the sole perpetrator of the crime.
The Gazette preserved only the closing portion of the report, and one cannot know from it what punishment the tribunal visited upon him. One is left with this image: a thirteen-year-old boy, an iron-shod staff too heavy for his hands, a spilt lamp, and slumber overtaking him upon a church pew before ever the strongbox yielded.
Gazette des nouveaux tribunaux, 1791, Court of the Third Arrondissement, case of Antoine, natural son, native of Bar-sur-Aube.