And here are some further details that I received after the trial.
The young man whom I found assassinated on the 13th September 1816 was called Félix-Adolphe-Joseph Billaudet; he was the son of François-Xavier-Léger Billaudet, court-crier to the tribunal de première instance in the arrondissement of Strasbourg; he was born at Strasbourg on the 1st April 1801, and was therefore, at the time of his death, fifteen years, six months, and twelve days old.
He was servant to M. Maréchal, forest inspector at Vervins, and had a passport upon him, at the time of his assassination, for Paris, signed at Vervins, 8th September 1816.
Probably the father and the mother of the poor lad are now dead, and I am perhaps the only person in the world who still remembers him, in thus going back to the days of my youth.
When Marot came out of prison, he returned to the country, and at first settled as a butcher in the village of Vivières. Then it seems things went badly with him, and he went to a little hamlet called Chelles, situated two or three leagues from Villers-Cotterets.
Some time after this change of residence, his wife died under mysterious and strange circumstances. While she was drawing water from a well, she leant against the pulley support, which broke; she was precipitated thirty feet deep into the well, where she was drowned.
Her death was regarded at the time as an accident.
Some time after that death, the body of a young carter was found buried only one or two feet deep, between Vivières and Chelles; he appeared to have been murdered by a pistol-shot, fired point blank in his back.
Some inquiry was set up, but no assassin or assassins could be traced.
Finally, some time after, Marot himself went before the magistrate to make a declaration concerning a new event that had just happened. A young glass-painter, who had come to ask hospitality of him, lacking the money needed for a stay at the inn (a request to which he had generously acceded), had died during the night of an attack of colic in the barn, where he had been given a truss of straw to lie on.