IX

THE LEGAL STATEMENT

Monsieur Alain placed the papers, yellowed by time, in Godefroid’s hand; the latter, bidding the old man good-night, carried them off to his room, where he read, before he slept, the following document:—­

THE INDICTMENT

Court of Criminal and Special Justice for the Department of the Orne

The attorney-general to the Imperial Court of Caen, appointed to fulfil his functions before the Special Criminal Court established by imperial decree under date September, 1809, and sitting at Alencon, states to the Imperial Court the following facts which have appeared under the above procedure.

The plot of a company of brigands, evidently long planned with consummate care, and connected with a scheme for inciting the Western departments to revolt, has shown itself in certain attempts against the private property of citizens, but more especially in an armed attack and robbery committed on the mail-coach which transported, May —­, 18—­, the money in the treasury at Caen to the Treasury of France.  This attack, which recalls the deplorable incidents of a civil war now happily extinguished, manifests a spirit of wickedness which the political passions of the present day do not justify.

Let us pass to the facts.  The plot is complicated, the details are numerous.  The investigation has lasted one year; but the evidence, which has followed the crime step by step, has thrown the clearest light on its preparation, execution, and results.

  The conception of the plot was formed by one Charles-Amedee-Louis-Joseph
  Rifoel, calling himself Chevalier du Vissard, born at the Vissard,
  district of Saint-Mexme, near Ernee, and a former leader of the rebels.

This criminal, whom H.M. the Emperor and King pardoned at the time of the general pacification, and who has profited by the sovereign’s magnanimity to commit other crimes, has already paid on the scaffold the penalty of his many misdeeds; but it is necessary to recall some of his actions, because his influence was great on the guilty persons now before the court, and he is closely connected with the facts of his case.

This dangerous agitator, concealed, according to the usual custom of the rebels, under the name of Pierrot, went from place to place throughout the departments of the West gathering together the elements of rebellion; but his chief resort was the chateau of Saint-Savin, the residence of a Madame Lechantre and her daughter, a Madame Bryond, situated in the district of Saint-Savin, arrondissement of Mortagne.  Several of the most horrible events of the rebellion of 1799 are connected with this strategic point.  Here a bearer of despatches was murdered, his carriage pillaged by the brigands under command of a woman, assisted by the notorious Marche-a-Terre.  Brigandage appeared to be endemic in that locality.

  An intimacy, which we shall not attempt to characterize, existed
  for more than a year between the woman Bryond and the said Rifoel.