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, subpoenaed 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.