by Kit Brennan
January came and went. I still lay many hours upon the bed, dreaming—sometimes horrible nightmares. Once, Henri’s head lay inexplicably on the ground, smiling up at me—just his head, blinking back tears and telling me that he was so sorry. Other times, I would lie in the weak shafts of winter sunlight, reimagining our hours of love-making, the smell of his skin and his wonderful, thick hair. His hands grasping my bare hips as I braced against him on hands and knees, turning back to smile at his head thrown back, his mouth open and yelling his delight. Then lying together and making our plans: for where we would live and where we longed to travel, for all the things we hoped to do and the love that would grow old around us… God, I couldn’t bear it…
Mid-February came. Carnival time, when Paris was a wild, merry tumble of riotous behaviour. George wrote again to say that Merci was dead. It had happened on one of those carnival afternoons, when she could hear the jostling, laughing crowds from her bed. She’d died coughing blood, but almost too weakly to clear the phlegm from her throat, so she’d choked in the end. There would be a big funeral, and burial was to take place in Montmartre Cemetery, paid for by her final lover. Did I wish to attend?
Again, no. The girl who spent in excess of one hundred thousand francs a year—as she’d confessed to me once with a laugh and a merry shrug—was no more.
With this sad news, I was galvanized into action. I rode every day in the Forest, vowing to get strong. Maurice, George’s son and now a young man, was learning to paint under the sometime-tutelage of family friend Eugène Delacroix; he’d left behind quite a nice pistol, which I appropriated, and I set up a target for practice. There was also Maurice’s epée and rapier, with which I occupied myself and regained my strength, feinting and thrusting at shadows. A new fear of food and drink made me thin. I was always on guard, keeping a low profile within the village and surroundings. My belongings, left behind in the hotel in Bonn: would anything in them lead de la Vega to me, I wondered, but tried not to dwell on it or my spirit would quail.
At the beginning of March, I returned quietly to Paris. Pier-Angelo had organized a benefit—keeping the invitations strictly amongst friends and well-wishers—to help me get back on my feet. I danced several cachuchas and a fandango. Giggling Théo Gautier had to remove his monocle as we spoke together later, to wipe tears from his eyes, so sad was he still at the death of his employer and friend. Money was raised, enough that I insisted George have some, with my most grateful thanks; I’d seen her struggling hard with the bills at Nohant, which cost far more to run than her apartments in Paris. She turned me down but smiled and said perhaps some other time, when my star had risen again.
Finally, the long-awaited and nerve-wracking ordeal: the trial of Beauvallon. The date: March 26, 1846. One year and two weeks after the fatal duel.
Nothing would bring Henri back. But Beauvallon should not be allowed to walk away and do it again to some other sweetheart’s beloved or mother’s only son.
The Trial
It was as if I was being forced to relive everything: the mistakes and misunderstandings, the wilful arrogance and belligerence of combative males, the inability—as if churning through quicksand—to turn fate around. To be clenched like a fist and yet fear in advance that it would be almost impossible to prove anything or to make the charges deliver any sort of justice. Five excruciating days.
Rouen is a small provincial town, completely unused to the demi-monde of Paris—the looser morality, the men-about-town, the hangers-on and spongers. Then add to that the colourful dresses and frockcoats of the dancers, writers, actresses, journalists and others who arrived in the town for the crucial and still-scandalous courtroom event: all very shocking! The prosecution—led by Monsieur Duval, representing the Dujarier family—had called forty-two witnesses, of which I was one; of course I knew that Dr. Koreff would be another. Henri’s mother, a tiny bird-like woman, was there, along with his dark-haired sister and her husband. Henri’s seconds, Bertrand and de Boigne, were ready to take the stand; so was Beauvallon’s second, d’Ecqueville. The other mysterious second for Beauvallon—in the black cabriolet—had vanished, though I now more than suspected who it might be and thanked God that he was nowhere in sight: I kept Maurice’s pistol handy in my reticule, just in case.
Alexandre Dumas and his son arrived in pomp and splendour, along with their various mistresses—some of whom, like Anäis Lievenne, were also to testify. They caused much talk as they swirled through the streets in a brand new open coach and four horses; the lead animals were Magnifique and Enchanté, Henri’s beautiful steeds. I longed to stroke their velvety noses, to see if they’d know me, but they were led away before I could get near them.
George Sand came on her own and took a place in the stands, dressed soberly in countess attire, her sharp brown eyes registering everything. And of course the Parisian journalists were there: Pier-Angelo, Théo, Jules Janin, everyone who was anyone. The papers were gasping for all that they could deliver.
The first day was given to questioning the accused, Rosemond de Beauvallon. He entered the courtroom with bravado, a sneer plastered across his lips. He was represented by the very fearsome Monsieur Berryer, a pugnacious attorney who had the reputation of very rarely losing a case. Just seeing Beauvallon was enough to make the red rage begin to surge upwards, like late-winter sap through my veins—and to listen to him speak, even more so. He remained unflappable as he gave his testimony, claiming, among other things, that he had been wounded in his honour, and that his demands were reasonable for a man who had suffered such a wound. “As Dujarier refused a reparation by words,” Beauvallon declared, “I demanded them by arms.” When asked by the prosecuting attorney, Monsieur Duval, what Henri Dujarier had said that had caused Beauvallon’s honour to be wounded, Beauvallon’s reply, I felt, was grossly inadequate: he said the deceased had told him he did not wish to be in Beauvallon’s company. It was obvious to me that the villain had pumped up a remark Henri made in passing, at the party, for the sake of provoking the fight. I found it difficult to concentrate while gripped by the red gush within, listening to Beauvallon’s braggadocio and then to d’Ecqueville’s equally smooth testimony. At last the first day came to an end; I returned to the hotel in which I was housed and sobbed my heart out against the pillows.
On the second day, Monsieur Duval called his witnesses. Arthur Bertrand, Henri’s principal second, explained that the seconds involved in the duel had drawn up a strict contract for its rules: the number of paces to be taken, the manner in which the weapons were to be chosen and so on. When either of the parties fired, the other was to stand still and immediately return fire. When each had fired once, that was to be the end of it and honour would be considered to have been satisfied. At each step of the way, Bertrand and de Boigne had tried to dissuade the two combatants but could not do so. The day before the duel, Bertrand said he’d heard Beauvallon declare in public, ‘If Dujarier will not accept this provocation, I will force him to come out on another.’ After reporting this to Henri, my love had told Bertrand, ‘If I decline, I will soon have twenty more challenges, and so I might as well get it over with. In truth, I don’t even know what I’ll be fighting about.’
Bertrand then moved on to testimony about the duel itself. Beauvallon’s party had won the toss over whose weapons were to be used the day before. On the morning, as I knew, Beauvallon had nonchalantly arrived at the field an hour and a half after the scheduled time—what had he been doing until then? That was critical. When de Boigne examined the pistols, he’d found they were warm and had been blackened, showing they’d already been discharged that morning, more than once.
The two adversaries had decided to go ahead anyway, however, Henri shivering and eager to end the matter. They paced off, turned, and Henri fired, his shot going wide. Then he dropped his pistol, rather than holding it up to protect his face, as was usual and allowed, and rather than make of himself a slightly smaller target by turning his body to the side, he presented a full front t
o Beauvallon. This, Bertrand was sure, was due to his inexperience. Beauvallon had waited a full forty seconds, at full aim the whole time, Bertrand swore, before deliberately shooting Henri in the face.
The courtroom rocked with gasps of disbelief; I thought I would be sick, and only barely managed to avoid it, even though Bertrand had told me this dreadful news months before. This, surely—as everyone knew—was not the way a gentleman behaved.
Koreff’s turn came. He took the stand, avoiding my eye as he passed my bench—almost ducking his head. As he was questioned, his eyes flitted about the courtroom, searching the faces of the crowd; this made me nervous—who was he searching for?—but then intense grief set in as I listened to his testimony.
“After Dujarier was shot and the smoke had cleared,” the hateful doctor said, “he fell slowly backwards and thence to the ground. I knelt behind him, but knew immediately that it was a mortal blow. The anxiety with which he looked at me showed he was perfectly conscious.”
Oh, God…
“I tried to calm him with a tranquillizing medicine I placed under his tongue, but his mouth was quickly filling with blood. I asked if he was in pain, and he nodded. I tried to urge him to cough, to clear his breathing passage, but he could not, and he couldn’t breathe. His face then turned bluish, he convulsed, squeezed my hand, and expired.”
Squeezed his hand, that monster’s hand? And not my own… What medicine had Koreff tried to give? But what did it matter? Bon-bon was dying and nothing could have saved him…
“The ball had entered a little above the right nostril, penetrated through the upper maxillary bone deep into the head, breaking the occipital bone in such a manner as to produce a cataclysmic disruption of the spinal marrow.”
My ears stopped working… I lost much ground, trying to follow what was being said at this point… All I could do was think of my darling, dying, from a fight that he didn’t knowingly provoke or understand…
I cannot bear to dwell for long upon the remainder of this trial. Other testimony included the finding that the iron ball used in the weapon and retrieved from Henri’s skull was much larger than those usually used in duelling matches. Was the combat a fair one, was the question argued hard by the prosecution. It was unequal, certainly. Beauvallon was a crack shot, Dujarier a complete novice—and Beauvallon knew this. There had been lying and subterfuge throughout the various stages of the investigation: a gunsmith, Devisme, testified hotly that d’Ecqueville had claimed that the guns used did not belong to Beauvallon’s brother-in-law, Cassagnac—and this the gunsmith knew to be a lie. They were Cassagnac’s. D’Ecqueville had also said that the guns were at Devisme’s shop being cleaned on the morning of the duel, and that is why the powder had been flashed off—flambage—earlier that day: Devisme swore that was another lie. The weapons had not been in his shop. Another gentleman then took the stand and testified that he’d seen Beauvallon practising with the pistols in Cassagnac’s garden for an hour or more prior to leaving for the Bois—practising with the weapons, in other words, at exactly the time when he should have been facing the shivering, pacing Henri Dujarier. Sounds of astonishment percolated around the courtroom until the president demanded silence.
Other witnesses were called, moving the scenario back in time to the supper party at the restaurant, Les Trois Frères Provençaux. Anäis Lievenne, brassy actress and current mistress of Alexandre fils, took the stand with a lot of simpering and swaying, and wearing a clashing outfit of bright red, bright blue and bright orange. Her testimony—brought forth in a loud and coarse accent—contained a foul lie! She said that Henri had been very drunk (unfortunately true, as he’d admitted to me), and that he’d said to her, “I’ll bed you within six months.” At this, the foul insect leered around at the court with a come-hither grin. Monsieur Duval had not expected such a statement and attempted to shush her, but she had an audience and was difficult to shush. It was as if she was deliberately acting for the other side—for Beauvallon’s side! I couldn’t believe it—and I certainly didn’t believe what she claimed Henri had said.
Other actresses and singers who’d been at the party were called, but most of them could remember nothing and so their testimony was worthless. Duval’s face showed his disgust with the result.
I was called late on that second day.
“Delores Maria de Porris y Montez, please take the stand.”
I reminded myself to stay calm, to speak soberly and truthfully; I raised my veil and removed my gloves to swear it on a Bible. When they read the letter Henri had written to me, aloud in the courtroom, I couldn’t help but shed copious tears. And when I was asked whether I’d known the duel was with Beauvallon, I replied that I had not and that if I had, I would have stopped it.
“And how would you have done that, mademoiselle?” the president asked, peering at me over the spectacles perched on his long nose.
“I would have reported the assignation to the police—or, if necessary, I would have gone to the field myself, armed.”
There was a gasp, signalling I’d breached some sort of etiquette. A few nervous titters pattered along behind the gasp.
I glared over at Beauvallon, sitting there with his attorney, smug and secure. The sight infuriated me. Pointing directly at him, I cried, “And I would not have missed!”
I shouldn’t have done it, I shouldn’t have said it—the red gush, the damned impetuous, angry self which gets the better of me in times of great stress. I was led from the stand amidst a violent hubbub of sound.
Dumas took the stand next and slowed proceedings by turning it into a storytelling session about the rules and regulations of “code duello” as he termed it, “to give it its original Italian name.” He went on and on, attempting to entertain the crowd and succeeding with some—though not with the attorneys, nor with the president of the court. Many looked sour, lips curled or mouths pursed. Alex fils followed his father, rambling on about the supper party and the card game afterwards. And that was the second day.
By the end of the third day, it was becoming apparent that the Dujarier case was losing ground, even though witness after witness still took the stand for the prosecution. What had begun to be whispered was that, if the jury decided the verdict strictly by adherence to the letter of the law, Beauvallon would be convicted for murder. But Beauvallon himself, as well as everyone else, knew that French juries rarely apply the murder statute to a duel unless the affair d’honneur differed sharply from the written contract signed by the seconds, or if some provable unfair advantage had occurred. That was why Duval was arguing so strongly about whether it had been a fair combat. Though duels were illegal, men still fought them—thereby consenting to the inherent danger. Honourable men used duels not so much to kill as to demonstrate a willingness to risk their life for their honour. And Henri had consented to the fight.
“Honourable men,” bellowed Monsieur Duval, finishing his summation at the end of the fourth excruciating day, “do not stand for forty long seconds, with their lives no longer in danger from their opponent, taking deliberate, slow aim and then blowing the other’s brains out. It was dishonest, premeditated, callous murder.”
He spoke energetically, passionately, but the balance was shifting and everyone could feel it. He finished with a plea, or perhaps it was intended as a pledge.
“If Monsieur de Beauvallon is absolved,” said Duval, “then the causeless duel, the unscrupulous duel, will have won. If so, we may discover in days to come that Henri Dujarier will have been sacrificed as part of a rising tide that will forever dishonour the ritual of duelling. Jury, I beg you to set an example—to do the right thing by Dujarier and his family.”
As the courtroom adjourned for the day, I was moving past the sea of reporters seated in the public rows. One of them broke free from the group and was hurrying out, muttering darkly in English to another Englishman, “Have you ever heard such outrageous testimonies? As if they think that duels are not barbarous? Standing there, without an ounce of shame,
any of them! Proclaiming that Frenchmen are elegant, Frenchmen are chivalrous, that’s why they invented the duel—otherwise, affairs of honour would devolve into cloak-and-dagger assassinations, like the Italians or the Spanish! But no, no, this way is up front and honourable, they say! Unbelievable!”
I asked Pier-Angelo, who was there reporting for the Corsaire, who the gentleman was.
“From Fraser’s Magazine, apparently—in London. Don’t know his name, but he’s certainly wound up like an electrified budgerigar.”
I shook my head: I agreed with the man’s outraged opinions. Just barely, just in the nick of time, I remembered that I was Spanish, and so sealed my lips.
*
The final deliberations took place on Sunday evening. By then, thousands of people had crowded around the Palace of Justice, and hundreds of gendarmes had been detailed to quell and contain the mob once the verdict was handed down. Monsieur Duval was still fighting hard, but that day the argument had been turned over to Monsieur Berryer, the defense. He was a mastiff with an enormous grip on the jury; their provincial faces registered their awe at his authoritative protestations of Beauvallon’s honourable intentions.