The affair left behind in the Gazette nothing more than the notice of a legal brief, scarce a few lines; yet those lines are worth an entire novel.
A provincial merchant, the sieur M—, and his wife entered a complaint against a sieur B— de C—, a petty legal practitioner, accused of abduction, violence, and seduction; one Demoiselle E—, wife to a doctor of medicine, stood accused alongside him. Here are the facts, as summarized by Maître Fournel, counsel for the parents: an underage daughter was carried off by force of arms from her father and mother’s house, and under their very eyes. The perpetrator of this abduction was a man without profession and without fortune; his purpose was to compel a marriage hitherto denied him.
What is most remarkable is not the abduction; it is the defence. The ravisher sought to evade a formal criminal trial, under the pretext that, in the prevailing manners of the age, the abduction of a minor girl was no longer regarded as anything more than a harmless prank, undeserving of serious scrutiny—a trifling matter, unworthy of a full inquest, which might easily be dispatched at the bar. He even went so far as to sue the girl’s parents for damages.
One would wish to know the young girl, to discover whether she had gone by force or of her own accord, and what part was played in the adventure by the physician’s wife indicted alongside the abductor. The Gazette says nothing of it, and records no outcome. It has preserved only, for posterity, the plea of a man who carried off a child, weapon in hand, and called it a mere prank.
Gazette des tribunaux, Parlement of Paris, brief by Maître Fournel for the sieur M—, merchant, against the sieur B— de C—, legal practitioner, accused of abduction.