A lodger in the Sirvens’ house at St. Alby could swear that only the footsteps of one person had been heard descending the stairs of the house on the night of December 17th, before Jeanne had hastened to those lodgers and told them of Elizabeth’s flight. In addition to this, while the poor girl herself had been tall and strong, her mother was feeble and old; her married sister, who was staying with her parents, was also feeble and in ill-health; and Elizabeth could easily have resisted Jeanne, had she attempted, unaided, to be her murderess.
Singly, then, none of the three could have killed Elizabeth; and that they had done it together, apart from the inherent improbability and the inhuman nature of such a crime, there was not an iota of evidence to prove. As in the case of Calas, no cries had been heard, and there were no signs of a struggle.
As for Sirven himself, he could declare an alibi. On the night in question he had supped and slept at the château of M. d’Esperandieu.
But such evidence, or any evidence, weighed nothing with a people who had at the moment innocent Calas in irons in the dungeon of Toulouse. “It passes for fact among the Catholics of the province,” wrote Voltaire in irony that came very near to being the literal truth, “that it is one of the chief points of the Protestant religion that fathers and mothers should hang, strangle, or drown all their children whom they suspect of having any penchant for the Roman faith.” Sirven’s public, like Calas’s, had “a need of dramatic emotion enough to change truth into a legend.”
What use to examine the body? No facts will alter our conviction. Beaudrigue, savage bigot though he was, had known his profession; the Beaudrigue of this case, Trinquier, the judge of Mazamet, was a little ignorant tradesman, who through the whole affair showed himself to be a tool in clever hands, a wire pulled—at Rome.
At first, Sirven was mad enough to rely on his own innocence, and the innocence of his family, to save them all. January 6 to 10, 1762, was spent in examining the witnesses. The honest Catholic villagers of St. Alby bore testimony to a man in favour of Sirven. But the attitude of the doctors who examined the body might well have alarmed him. It alarmed his friends; on their advice he employed an avocat, Jalabert.
Jalabert was devoted and expert. But the devotion of a saint and the brilliancy of a genius would not have helped the Sirvens.
They were charged with the murder of Elizabeth, and instantly took their decision. Proofs had not freed Calas—why should they save them? Remembering the fury of the people of Toulouse, “they fled while there was yet time.”
They stayed at their old home, Castres, at the house of a friend, for one night. Under the cover of the next they walked through rain, mire, and darkness to five-miles distant Roquecombe. So far, they had at least been together.
But they saw very clearly now that they could not hope to escape notice if they travelled en famille.