It is no ordinary case that the Gazette recounts here, but rather a tale told by an advocate to his judges to make them tremble. He was defending one Marquais, detained these past three years upon mere presumptions; and he related to them what a jurisconsult of Toulouse, to whom an aged father had come to entrust his son’s cause, had answered that troubled parent.
“Did two witnesses see your son fire the shot?” — “No, Monsieur; yet there are grave presumptions.” — “Presumptions, great God! Hear me well.”
A young man from the environs of Toulouse lost both father and mother; he was left without fortune and without support. A wealthy, bachelor uncle took him in and raised him fittingly; thus they lived for several years, well pleased with one another. One day, the youth wished to feast his friends and asked his uncle for money. The uncle denied him the coin, but offered his own house and promised to defray the banquet’s expenses. The nephew withdrew in a sullen temper, pressed his suit anew, and met with another refusal. “You will not, then?” — “No.” — “Very well, I swear I shall have my revenge.” He strode out with menacing gestures.
They sought him in vain for the remainder of the day. At dusk, he reappeared, prowling about the house; he was seen entering and departing; his gaze was dark, and an axe rested upon his shoulder. During the night, the uncle was slain by a blow from an axe.
Everything accused the young man: the quarrel, the threats, the gestures, the comings and goings, the axe. Everything was corroborated by the uniform depositions of several eyewitnesses. The judges condemned him; the sentence was carried out. And shortly thereafter, the true assassin was discovered. The nephew was innocent.
“Go, good old man,” concluded the jurisconsult, “go relate this story to your judges, and take heart as to your son’s fate.”
Marquais’s advocate added that his client, in three years of dungeon life among felons, had remained the gentlest of prisoners, and that twenty times, when his companions had sought to break their chains, he had remained motionless. The Gazette does not record whether the tale of the uncle and the axe made the judges of 1792 tremble. It has endured, in any event, as one of those true parables passed down by advocates to remind the bench that presumption is not proof.
Gazette des nouveaux tribunaux, 1792, plea for the Sieur Marquais, detained these past three years.