As public feeling ran high, and it was felt that an impartial jury could not have been secured in Paris, the trial was held at Rouen. The date was March 26, 1846. Attracted by the special circumstances of the case, the court was crowded.
"Nearly all those who were present," says Claudin, "belonged to the world of the boulevards." Albert Vandam was among the spectators; and with him for a companion was a much more distinguished person, Gustave Flaubert.
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."