Early in the year 1774, Joseph Feron, known as Lafrance, entered into the domestic service of the ladies D——. He believed the household to be one of opulence; he was promised four hundred livres in wages to attend at once to the kitchen and to the ordinary service of the house. He possessed some modest means, amassed over long years in service.
His mistresses soon made a show of placing their confidence in him, to which the Gazette promptly subjoins: they had their reasons. Far from dwelling in comfortable ease, they were casting about for funds. They induced their servant to advance them six hundred livres against a promissory note they held in hand; they would have had him take another for eighteen hundred livres, but he possessed no more than twenty-five louis.
Feron soon perceived that he had ventured too far. Having need of money himself, he asked for the return of his advances. One day, the lady de L—— informed him that she had just received a considerable sum, and that he had only to hand over his notes to receive their full amount. From his pocketbook he drew the note for six hundred livres, together with another for one hundred and ten livres on account of advances made for the household, and laid them upon a commode. The lady stepped into the adjoining chamber; he remained in the dining room, continuing his service, trusting she was about to bring him his coin. She returned to take her place at the table. The notes had just been torn to pieces and cast into the fire.
He lamented his misfortune bitterly, producing a singed scrap upon which his name was still legible. It was then confessed that they could not pay him, though promises were given that he should be satisfied at the earliest possible hour.
What followed was a headlong descent. The man who had drawn the six-hundred-livre note declared he had never received its value. Upon returning from a journey on which he had attended the daughter of one of his mistresses, Feron found his strongbox forced open and his effects carried off; he even recognized one of his own shirts upon the back of the household’s young son. A neighboring procurator informed him that there was no remedy to be had: the ladies were utterly insolvent. He was sent to a public officer of their acquaintance, who received him harshly, reviled him as a rogue, and warned him that he would be hanged.
Feron demanded his reckoning and tied up what remained of his possessions into a bundle. The gazette’s account breaks off here. Yet the title of the cause reveals the sequel: his mistresses turned his denouncers; he stood accused of grave crimes, from which a decree of the court finally cleared him. The officer’s threat had thus been no idle word: it was the debtors who laid the complaint, and the creditor who was brought to the bar of justice.
Gazette des tribunaux, 1775, Parlement of Paris, Tournelle criminelle: cause of Joseph Feron, known as Lafrance, against the ladies D——.