V
All being in readiness, and the stage set for the drama that was about to be unfolded, the judges, in the traditional red robes, took their seats, with M. Letendre de Tourville as president of the Court. M. Salveton, the public prosecutor, and M. Rieff, the advocate-general, represented the Government; and Mâitre Berryer and M. Léon Duval appeared respectively on behalf of the accused and the dead man's mother and sister.
As it had been suggested that de Beauvallon had purposely arrived late on the ground, in order to have some preliminary practice, he was told to give an account of his movements of the morning of the duel.
"I got up at seven o'clock," he said, "and went downstairs with the pistols which had been waiting for me at the concierge's when I returned home on the previous evening."
"The concierge remembers nothing of that," interrupted M. Duval. "This is a fresh fact. We must certainly consider it. What happened next?"
"I went off in a cab to M. d'Ecquevillez, and handed the pistols to him. At half-past ten I returned home, to wait for my seconds. We arrived on the ground at half-past eleven. M. de Boignes received us coldly, with his hands in his pockets, and said: 'You do well to keep us waiting like this for you. Name of God! this isn't a summer morning. We think there is not sufficient motive to fight a duel.' I answered frigidly, but politely, that I did not agree with him, and that I was in the hands of my seconds."
"But one of them, M. de Flers," remarked the President, "thought the quarrel trifling and said so. Another thing. Why did M. d'Ecquevillez tell us that the pistols belonged to him? Remember, he has given us details as to where he got them."
"I ignore details," was the lofty response.
"If you do, we don't," returned the judge.
A vigorous denial was made by de Beauvallon to the suggestion that he was familiar with the pistols used in the duel. To convince the jury that he was not to be believed, the opposing counsel then told them that he had once pawned a watch belonging to somebody else. When the judge expressed himself shocked at such depravity, de Beauvallon, says a report, "hung his head and wept."
Nor did d'Ecquevillez, the other defendant, cut a very happy figure. His real name was said to be Vincent, and aspersions were cast on his right to dub himself a "Count." He swore he had never admitted that the pistols belonged to him, and that de Beauvallon had borrowed them from the gunsmith, Desvismes. The latter, however, calling on heaven for support, declared the statement to be a "wicked invention."
Believing in the efficacy of numbers in getting up their case, forty-six witnesses were assembled by the prosecution. Mlle Lièvenne, the first of them to be examined, brought with her an atmosphere of the theatre, "adopting a flashy costume, in deplorably bad taste." "This," says a chronicler, "took the form of a blue velvet dress, a scarlet shawl, and a pearl-grey mantle." Altogether, a striking colour-scheme. But it did not help her. To the indignation of the examining-counsel, she affected to remember nothing, declaring that she had been "too busy at the supper-table, looking after the company."
The other young women, described as "more or less actresses," who had also been present, appeared to be suffering from a similar loss of memory. Their minds, they protested, were absolutely blank as to what had happened at the restaurant and very little could be extracted from them. When they had given their evidence, they looked for seats in the body of the court. The Rouen ladies, however, having somewhat rigid standards, would not permit them to sit between the wind and their propriety.
"Things are coming to a pretty pass," they declared, "when play-actresses imagine they can sit beside respectable women like ourselves."
Thereupon, the discomfited damsels withdrew to the hard benches of the public gallery.
Dumas, subpœnaed as a witness, drove all the way from Paris in a four-horsed carriage, with Méry as a travelling companion. When he took his place on the stand, M. de Tourville, affecting judicial ignorance, enquired his profession.
"If," returned the other, striking an attitude, "I did not here happen to find myself in the country of the illustrious Corneille, I should call myself a dramatist."
"Just so," was the caustic response, "but there are degrees among dramatists."
Taking this for encouragement, Dumas launched out into a disquisition on the history of the duello through the ages that was nearly as long as one of his own serials. In the middle of it, a member of the jury, anxious to be in the limelight, asked him a question.
"How does it happen," he enquired, "that Dujarier, who considered that a man of fashion must fight at least one duel, had never prepared himself by learning to shoot and fence?"
"I cannot tell you," was the reply. "My son, however, told me that he once accompanied him to a shooting-gallery. Out of twenty shots, he only hit the target twice."
Dumas made an exit as dramatic as his entry.
"I beg," he said, "that the honourable Court will permit me to return to Paris, where I have a new tragedy in five acts being performed this evening."
Lola Montez, garbed in heavy mourning, was the next summoned to give evidence.
"When," says one who was there, "she lifted her veil and removed her glove, to take the prescribed oath, a murmur of admiration ran through the gathering." To this an impressed reporter adds: "Her lovely eyes appeared to the judges of a deeper black than her lace ruffles."
The presiding judge had no qualms about enquiring her age; and she had none about lopping five years off it and declaring that she was just twenty-one. Nor did she advance any objection to being described, with Gallic candour, as the "mistress of Dujarier."
During her evidence, Lola Montez, probably coached by Dumas, did just what was expected of her. Thus, she shed abundant tears, struck pathetic attitudes, and several times looked on the point of collapsing. But what she had to say amounted to very little. In fact, it was nothing more than an assertion that ill-feeling existed between Dujarier and de Cassagnac, the brother-in-law of de Beauvallon, and that the quarrel was connected with an alleged debt.
Dujarier, she said, had forbidden her to make de Beauvallon's acquaintance, or to attend the supper at the restaurant. He had returned from it in an excited condition at 6 o'clock the next morning and told her that he would have to accept a challenge.
"I was troubled about it," she said, "all day long. But for M. Bertrand's assurance that the encounter was to be with M. de Beauvoir, I would have gone to the police. You see, de Beauvoir was a high-minded gentleman, and would not have condescended to profit from the poor Dujarier's lack of skill."
"Did you not," enquired counsel, "say 'I am a woman of courage, and, if the meeting is in order, I will not stop it'?"
"Yes, but that was because I understood it was to be with de Beauvoir, and he would not willingly have harmed Dujarier. When I heard it was to be with de Beauvallon I exclaimed, 'My God! Dujarier is as good as dead!'"
"I myself," she added, "could handle a pistol more accurately than the poor Dujarier; and, if he had wanted satisfaction, I should have been quite willing to have gone out with M. de Beauvallon myself."
A murmur of applause met this assurance. Lola's attitude appealed to the spectators. She was clearly a woman of spirit.
During the proceedings that followed some sharp things were said about M. Granier de Cassagnac, the accused's brother-in-law. Some of them were so bitter that at last he protested.
"Monsieur le President," he exclaimed hotly. "I cannot bear these abominable attacks on myself any longer."
"If you can't bear them, you can always leave the court," was the response.
"This gentleman's indignation does not disturb me in the least," said the public prosecutor. "I have already had experience of it, and I consider it to be artificial."