Not in the least upset, M. Berryer advanced another point. As might have been expected of so accomplished an advocate, he had little difficulty in demolishing the elaborate, but specious and unsupported, hypothesis built up by the other side. Hard facts did more with the stolid and unimaginative Rouen jury than did picturesque embroideries.
"Is the accusation true?" demanded the President.
"On my honour and on my conscience, before God and before man," announced the foreman, "the declaration of the jury is that it is not true."
As a result of this finding, de Beauvallon was acquitted of the charge of murder. But he did not escape without penalty, for he was ordered to pay 20,000 francs "compensation" to the mother and Dujarier's relatives.
"He was the only son of his mother, and she was a widow." Convinced that there had been a miscarriage of justice and a vast amount of false swearing, the dead man's friends set to work to collect other evidence. By a stroke of luck, they got into touch with a gardener, who said that he had seen de Beauvallon, in company with d'Ecquevillez, having some surreptitious pistol practice on the morning of the duel. Thereupon, the pair of them were rearrested and tried for perjury. Being convicted, d'Ecquevillez was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment and de Beauvallon to eight years. But neither couple stopped in durance very long. The revolution of 1848 opened the doors of the Conciergerie and they made good their escape, the one of them to Spain, and the other to his Creole relatives in Guadeloupe.