1. There are three names at the end of the trial brief: Monsieur Séguier, Avocat Général (first name); M. Le Prestre, Avocat (second name); Souchay, Procureur (third name). Early in his career as avocat général and counselor for the Parlement of Paris, Séguier (1726-1792) established his reputation as an eloquent orator and, during the reign of Louis XVI, became the senior avocat général and a staunch supporter of the monarchy. As the most prestigious name on the side of the defense, Séguier was the main orator and author of the brief. Le Prestre and Souchay were supporting members of his legal team who did the actual penning and publication of the brief. “Generally in collaboration with the procureur [Souchay], the barrister [avocat Le Prestre] did not simply submit them [legal briefs] to the judges, but often had them printed and distributed to the public.” Bell, David A., Lawyers and Citizens: The Making of a Political Elite in Old Regime France (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 31Google Scholar.

Seguier's importance is further enhanced by his position. The king's men (gens du roi) in the French parliament were the procureur-général and two or three avocats généraux. These royal attorneys were special pleaders for monarchical and public interests. The procureur-général, as the king's chief solicitor, oversaw the pleading of the avocats généraux in any litigation involving the Crown's interests. In all his activities, he was seconded by the other gens du roi, especially the senior avocat général. See Stone, Bailey, The French Parlements and the Crisis of the Old Regime (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), 24Google Scholar. Thus, even though avocat Le Prestre's and procureur Souchay's signatures are on the case abstract, Séguier's name before both of theirs means that he is the man of prestige who has pleaded the case for Dubarle. It was not unusual for an avocat général to take cases that dealt with public order rather than royal litigation. See Swann, Julian, Politics and the Parlement of Paris under Louis XV, 1754-1774 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar: “The gens du roi… had wide-ranging responsibilities for maintaining public order.” Criminal cases and appeals were under the rubric of public order. See Andrews, Richard Mowery, Law, Magistracy, and Crime in Old Regime Paris (1735-1789), vol. 2, The System of Criminal Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 91Google Scholar: “He (procureur-général) was public prosecutor in all criminal cases judged by the Grand-Chambre in first instance or on appeal, and he could initiate those cases.” Andrews also makes clear that the procureur-général or his deputies (i.e., avocats généraux) reviewed appeals cases. Dubarle's case was an appeal against Chefdeville's charges. Thus, Séguier, in his capacity as avocat général, seconds or substitutes for his immediate superior, the procureur-général. In other words, Séguier was a member of the public ministry who replaced the public prosecutor (procureur-général) at hearings in the Supreme Court of Appeals and in other appeal courts.

Legal precedent also exists to show that an avocat général not only defends a monarch's interests. In Dubarle's defense/appeal Séguier reminds magistrates of Monsieur Bignon's famous defense of Madame de Maillard against charges of adultery. The judgment in the famous Arrêt de Maillard (15 March 1674) ruled against adultery and showed a willingness to declare legitimate the children involved. The Maillard defense was pleaded by Bignon who was avocat général. In like manner, Séguier, building a case against Chefdeville's adultery charges, is within the framework of his duties, not in contradiction with the royal aspects of his job, and consistent with precedent.

2. The English translation of “mémoire” is legal brief or abstract. A mémoire was also regarded as a noncanonical form of literature. See Maza, Sarah, Private Lives and Public Affairs: The Causes Célèbres of Prerevolutionary France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 2Google Scholar: “Newsletters and gazettes usually reported on the appearance of a major cause célèbre brief, evaluated its qualities and shortcomings, and described the reading public's reaction to it. I discovered that these public trial briefs were issued in quantities that outstripped those of most other kinds of printed matter at the time.”

The distinction between legal and literary narratives is of key importance. Literary narratives are produced by the imagination and not necessarily based on fact. In other words, there may be some factual basis but it is possible that the action/content never really happened. Legal narratives are produced by the imagination and necessarily based on fact. Lawyers use facts as they construct their narrative, which they then tell in a rich, creative manner that emphasizes their point of view. The critics L. H. Larue and Natalie Zemon Davis make this important distinction. See below, notes 5-9.

3. In The Novel of Worldliness (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969)Google Scholar, Peter Brooks discusses the protagonists of Crébillon fils, Marivaux, and Laclos (as well as Stendhal) and their espousement of high society's social code, even at the risk of disfigurement and masquerade.

4. The functions of the various segments of a forensic discourse determine the classical system of partitioning it into four usual parts: exordium, narration or statement of fact, confirmation, and peroration. See Aricò, Santo L., Rousseau's Art of Persuasion in “La Nouvelle Héloïse” (Lanham: University Press of America, 1994), 52Google Scholar. For five parts of a classical arrangement—exordium, narration, confirmation, refutation, and peroration—see Corbett, Edward J., Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), 303Google Scholar. In this article I consider the refutation as an integral part of the confirmation.

5. LaRue, L. H. states: “I suggest that one should listen for that moment in legal discourse when a story is told. These moments are crucial.” Constitutional Law as Fiction: Narrative in the Rhetoric of Authority (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), 11Google Scholar.

6. LaRue emphasizes the importance of stories in the persuasive process. “Since persuasion is so important, my metaphor ‘law as fiction’ is apt. Without persuasion, law could not be law, and without fiction, there would be no persuasion.” Ibid., 11.

7. In his remarks about historians, applicable also to lawyers, LaRue notes that historians write accounts based on fact and then adds that good historical accounts are also “produced by the imagination.” He emphasizes that witnesses who wrote the documents that historians use may have been biased, “So that one must cross-examine these documents carefully.” Ibid., 13.

8. LaRue points out that, in common speech, fiction is a story about something that did not really happen and adds that “it would be disastrous to leave it at that.” His dictionary definition—fiction “is produced by the imagination and is not necessarily based on fact”—implies “a sharp dichotomy between two kinds of stories: those produced by the imagination and not necessarily based on fact, versus those not produced by the imagination and necessarily based on fact.” LaRue hesitates to accept the dichotomy. “Can we produce stories without using the imagination? And is it possible to have stories that are based solely on the facts?” Ibid.

9. I accept as my own LaRue's definition of the word “story.” He uses that of the novelist Reynolds Price and quotes his discussion of biblical narratives: “From Genesis we gather that Adam… invented narrative; when God hunts out the human pair after their fall, Adam says, ‘I heard Your voice in the garden and feared, since I'm naked, and hid myself—a chronologically consecutive account of more than one past event, with attention to cause and self-defense: thus a narrative.” Ibid., 15.

Price's original definition is in his A Palpable God: Thirty Stories Translated from the Bible: With an Essay on the Origins and Life of Narrative (New York: Atheneum, 1978), 8.Google Scholar Natalie Zemon Davis also summarizes how archival documents may be considered fictional. “By ‘fictional’ I do not mean their feigned elements, but rather, using the other and broader sense of the root word fingere, their forming, shaping, and molding elements: the crafting of a narrative.” Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and Their Tellers in Sixteenth-Century France: (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987), 3Google Scholar.

10. Kibedi A. Varga stresses this preparatory function when he cites the classical rhetorician Bordaloue's definition of exordium: “qui prepare l'auditeur à écouter favorablement le sujet” (“that which prepares the hearer to favorably hear the subject”). Rhétorique et littérature: Etudes de structures classiques (Paris: Didier, 1970), 71Google Scholar. All translations of French citations are my own.

11. “A husband who has absented himself long enough for people to consider him dead, and who has even left his wife in error on that point and the one to whom he had entrusted her by written agreement before disappearing, can he, four years after the death of this wife, charge with kidnapping and adultery the Citizen with whom she lived, believing herself free to marry a second time.” Méxsmoire pour Jean-Baptiste Dubarle, marchand de vin à Vaugirard, accusé et appelant. Contre le nommé Chefdeville, compagnon menuisier, accusateur et intimé (Paris: Ch. Est. Chenault, 1770), 1Google Scholar. All further references to the Mémoire are documented by a page number in parentheses, immediately after the quotation. The English translation appears in the footnotes.

Various techniques assure an audience that a subject merits its attention. Séguier uses the introduction inquisitive, which indicates that the content is important. His question acts as a hook—a provocative or startling hyperbole to capture interest. For a discussion of attention-getting techniques, see Corbett, Classical Rhetoric, 303, 312.

12. “This accuser did not flatter himself with the thought of succeeding, he only hoped to make Dubarle contribute money or cause his downfall.” Séguier gives the magistrates an idea of his case without revealing everything. This preparation informs spectators of the end or object of a discourse and disposes them to be receptive to what is said. See Corbett, Classical Rhetoric, 303.

13. “He will not succeed, and the evil one, who comes here publically to dishonor himself, will carry away his shame free of charge.” Séguier's last statement in the exordium is an example of an introduction paradoxical (Chefdeville's actions, although improbable, must be admitted) and an introduction corrective (Chefdeville has done wrong, and Séguier will thwart his evil plans). For a discussion of the techniques, see Corbett, Classical Rhetoric, 303-7.

14. The rhetorician Jean Baptiste Crevier insisted that the distinction between something that has already taken place and the manner in which it has occurred is of major importance. See Crevier, , La Rhétorique française (Paris: Saillant et Desaint, 1765), 348–49Google Scholar; British and Continental Rhetoric and Elocution (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1976), Reel 11Google Scholar. René Bary proposed that three elements characterize an expository presentation: the subject matter, its various parts, and the arrangement of the material. See Bary, , La Rhétorique française (Paris: Chez Pierre Le Petit, 1659), 244Google Scholar; British and Continental Rhetoric and Elocution, Reel 9.

15. The term compagnon indicates the rank of the two carpenters. They were no longer apprentices but had not yet become master carpenters. They were at an intermediary stage.

16. All of the houses on the rue St. Denis had five or six floors. The crowded street, along with the neighboring rue de Ferronnerie and rue aux Fers, must have created a claustrophobic atmosphere and contributed to unsanitary conditions. In 1763, the Châtelet Commissioners Hugues and Machurin attributed an unbearable stench from the Innocents Cemetery near les Halles to the fact that it was enclosed on all sides by the five- and six-story houses of the rue St. Denis and its neighboring streets. See Chagniot, Jean, Nouvelle Histoire de Paris au XVIII^e Siècle (Paris: Hachette, 1988), 176Google Scholar. The rue St. Denis, along with Saint Honoré and Dauphine, was one of the city's main traffic arteries. It was noisy and congested. See Babeau, Albert, Paris en 1789 (Paris: Librairie de Paris, Nouvelle Edition), 28Google Scholar.

17. “Dubarle opened his purse for his use.”

18. “Reducing him to have neither heat nor residence.”

19. When Chefdeville entered Hôtel-Dieu, this oldest hospital in Paris was located on the south side of Notre Dame Square. It counted twelve hundred beds in twenty-one wards. It was, along with Salpetrière, the most important hospital in the city. Hôtel-Dieu was severely criticized because of its poor hygiene, filth, overcrowding, lack of personnel, and disturbingly high death rate. It burned in 1772 and was rebuilt on the same spot. It was rebuilt again from 1868 to 1878 on the other side of the church square.

20. Séguier made it clear that Chefdeville's writing in the contract was substandard but nevertheless included it as objective evidence. “Void sa teneur: quelqu'intelligible qu'il soit. nous en copierons servilement le texte” (4). “Here are its terms: as comprehensible as it may be, we servilely reproduce the text.”

Pardevant Chefdeville & Sieur Dubarle, & Marie-Anne

Deslions, femme de Chefdeville, nous consanton au bien meûmébleblier tous trois, au que le Sieur Dubarle gourat de ladit fame de Chefdeville, au fait que bon lui sanblera, & que le dit bien en gant seron commun entre nous; foi quoi nous signons tous trois. Chefdeville, Dubarle, Marie-Anne Lomé. (4)

The contract gives Marie-Anne's name as Lomé. But Séquier's mémoire refers to her as Deslions. Neither I nor two curators at the Bibliothèque Historique de la VMe de Paris were able to logically transcribe Chefdeville's language into contemporary French.

21. Vaugirard, currently in Paris's Fifteenth and Sixth Arrondissement, was in Dubarle's time a Left-Bank village-suburb that was annexed into Paris in 1860.

22. “He received a sum of money from Dubarle for that purpose, and left, but he did not show up again, and did not even give them any news about himself.”

23. Barrière de Seve is currently spelled Barrière de Sèvres.

24. Bicêtre: a Parisian prison, severe enough to be referred to as “une maison de force” (“a force prison”). It was also an institution that received the elderly and infirm. One of its duties was to receive blind or feeble soldiers who had not accumulated enough time in the military or who had a reputation of questionable morality and could not therefore be admitted to the Invalides. See Chagniot, Nouvelle Histoire de Paris, 291, 482.

25. “Why has he abandoned me?” Marie-Anne used Jean-Baptiste's family name. Thus, neighbors in Vaugirard knew her as Marie-Anne Dubarle. When she gave birth to her last child, the midwife, who had helped deliver the first two infants in Vaugirard, went to the Barrière de Seve. There she asked whether the spouses had ever given lodging in the Vaugirard cabaret to the woman in question. The midwife had heard the story of the two letters in her village and must have wondered about the possibility of a lodger by that name.

26. “Chefdeville no longer maintained his self-control.”

27. In Sincerity and Authenticity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972)Google Scholar, Lionel Trilling states that at a certain point in history “the moral life of Europe added to itself a new element, the state or quality of the self which we call sincerity” (2).

28. “The word [sincerity] as we now use it refers primarily to a congruence between avowal and actual feeling.” Ibid., 2. In Séguier's account there is no congruence between Chefdeville's external behavior and actual feeling.

29. Trilling's statement summarizes the dynamic. “If sincerity is the avoidance of being false to any man through being true to one's own self, we can see that this state of personal existence is not to be attained without the most arduous effort.” Ibid., 5-6. In Séguier's story, this effort, most important in moral life, was absent in Chefdeville's life.

30. Trilling develops the analogy with acting. “In this enterprise of presenting the self, of putting ourselves on the social stage, sincerity itself plays a curiously compromised part. Society requires of us that we present ourselves as being sincere, and the most efficacious way of satisfying this demand is to see to it that we really are sincere, that we actually are what we want our community to know we are. In short, we play the role of being ourselves, we sincerely act the part of the sincere person, with the result that a judgment may be passed upon our sincerity that is not authentic.” Ibid., 11. In Séguier's story, Chefdeville is insincere in his sincere appearance.

31. Trilling discusses falsely presenting a self and the character Iago as an example. “‘I am not what I am’ could have been said not alone by Iago but by a multitude of Shakespeare's virtuous characters.” Ibid., 13.

32. Châtelet was the name given to two fortresses in Paris, the Grand and the Petit. The Grand, demolished in 1802, was where Chefdeville went to file his suit against Dubarle. It was located on the Right Bank of the Seine in front of the Pont-au-Change. It was the seat of criminal jurisdiction for the viscountcy and provostship of Paris. The Petit was on the Left Bank of the Seine in front of the Petit-Pont and was used as a prison.

33. “in indecent action with his wife”

34. “theft, seduction, kidnapping, and adultery”

35. “His destroyed business and defamed honor will never recover from such a cruel wound.”

36. “It is less reasonable to raise a poor man to be rich than a rich man to be poor; because in proportion to the number in the two states there are more ruined people than successful ones.” Oeuvres complètes de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ed. Gagnebin, Bernard and Raymond, Marcel. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1959), 4:267.Google Scholar

37. “Of a thousand who leave the village there are not ten of them who do not destroy themselves in the city, or who do not practice the vices more strongly than the people from whom they have learned them.… The unhappy ones that she [fortune] has not favored do not go back to their former state and become beggars or thieves, rather than become peas-ants again.” Ibid., 2:537.

38. McPhee, Peter, A Social History of France: 1780-1880 (London: Routledge, 1992), 12Google Scholar.

39. McPhee states that Paris was an amalgam of neighborhoods distinguished by geography, social structure, and the presence of migrants from particular regions. “Inside the new and hated customs walls were faubourgs… which remained semi-rural, the home of impoverished migrants… three quarters of the families of the faubourg St. Antoine lived in one or two rooms.” Ibid., 13.

40. Ibid., 12.

41. McPhee summarizes the after-work dynamic: “Men relaxed from 14-16 hour days in one of Paris’ 3,000 taverns (cafés were considered bourgeois) and women from their paid and unpaid work over cards or in the street.” Ibid., 13.

42. “In articles on specific trades and on artisinal production (as in the article ‘Communautes’) the encyclopedists were generally critical of the guilds, faulting them for excessive regulation, indifference to progress in their trades, and the tendency to promote the particular over the public interest.” Truant, Cynthia Maria, The Rites of Labor: Brotherhoods of Compagnonnage in Old and New Regime France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), 49Google Scholar.

43. In the article “Maîtrises,” explains Truant, Faiguet de Villeneuve “criticized the obstacles that guilds placed in the way of becoming a master, especially the high costs and the requirement that the compagnon produce a chef d'oeuvre.” She points out that Villeneuve made an important connection between economic status and political rights. According to Villeneuve, states Truant, “it was particularly unfair to impose such burdens because the compagnon was ‘as much as anyone else a member of the republic, and he should benefit equally from the protection of the laws.’” Ibid. Truant summarizes and quotes from Faiguet de Villeneuve's “Maîtrises” in the ninth volume (pages 910-15) of Encyclopédie; ou, Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts, et des métiers, par une société de gens de lettres, 17 vols. text and 11 vols. plates (Paris: 1751-1772)Google Scholar. Truant also points out that Villeneuve's article is classified both under the categories of arts and commerce and under politics. To strengthen further the case against masters and guilds, she refers readers to Denis Diderot's articles, “Compagnon” and “Compagnonnage,” in the Encyclopédie, 3:744.

44. “valetudinarian"; “incapable of working with masters”

45. In Bretonne's, Restif de laLa Paysanne Pervertie (Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1972)Google Scholar the writer portrays members of the wealthy peasantry. His characters Ursule and Edmond's peasant family own property and enjoy a good life. But both Ursule and Edmond, like Chefdeville, leave their village, province, and country life in search of a more socially acceptable existence and suffer catastrophic consequences.

46. Natalie Zemon Davis's comment about historical narrative applies to Chefdeville and Seguier's story. “I think we can agree with Roland Barthes, Paul Ricoeur, and Lionel Gossman that shaping choices of language, detail, and order are needed to present an account that seems to both writer and reader true, real, meaningful, and/or explanatory.” Davis. Fiction in the Archive, 3.

47. Classical rhetoricians refer to argumentation as the confirmation. “La confirmation est la partie centrale du discours, surtout dans les genres judiciaire et délibératif.” “The confirmation is the central part of the discourse, especially in judiciary and deliberative kinds.” Varga, Rhétorique et littérature, 78.

48. “La confirmation se définit comme l'arrangement des arguments.” “The confirmation is defined as the arrangements of arguments.” Ibid. Varga points out that classical treatises discuss syllogisms and other forms of reasoning in his chapter on confirmation.

49. “Je donne pouvoir et consentement à mon épouse de tout vendre quel bon lui sembrera pour payer mes dettes auquel je suis embarassé pour honneur à mes faire, auquel je dit confiante, et j'ai signé, Eustache Chefdeville. A Paris ce 4 novembre 1759” (3). “I give power and consent to my spouse whom I address as confidant to sell all that she feels appropriate to pay the debts encumbering me and to satisfy my honor, and I have signed, Eustache Chefdeville. In Paris on this 4 November 1759.”

50. “The falsehood of the charge is thus evident.”

51. “Thus he did not plunder Chefdeville.”

52. Séguier's movement from strong to stronger arguments reflects a classical technique of persuasion. In a work of the early eighteenth century, the Parisian scholar Charles Rollin quoted Quintilian who verified the validity of beginning with weak proofs and ending with strong ones. “L'ordre et l'arrangement des preuves doivent être différents selon l'exigeance des matières que l'on traite, de sorte pourtant que jamais le discours n'aillent en déclinant, et ne finisse par de minces et de faibles raisons, après qu'on en a employé d'abord de fortes.” “The order and arrangement of proofs should be different as the subject may require, so that the discourse never gets weaker and ends with puny and feeble reasons, after first using strong ones. Rollin, , Traité des Etudes (1732-33; Paris: Librairie de Firmin Didot Frères, 1846), 1:430–31.Google Scholar

53. “all of the external errands”

54. “If he had believed her taken away by force, if he had tried to get her back, or simply to live with her, who would have prevented him from returning?”

55. “That is the man who comes here today crying out abduction and kidnapping; without a doubt there has never been a more indignant calumny.”

56. “He told him: Pay up, or I will destroy you while dishonoring myself.”

57. “That is his crime.”

58. “the immortal speech for the defense by M. Bignon, Avocat Général at the time”

59. “Dubarle dares to believe himself in a situation just as favorable.”

60. According to Varga, most classical treatises on rhetoric state that a peroration is composed of two parts: the first recapitulates and the second appeals to emotions. Rhétorique et littérature, 79. Séguier chose to close his delivery on an emotional note rather than review hard-core evidence.

61. “His wife and the child she carries in her arms entreat on behalf of this husband and father.”

62. No stranger to controversy, Séguier opposed the Turgot Edicts. Turgot, minister of finance under Louis XVI, strove to implement liberal economic reforms. He suppressed customs within France and wanted to free commerce and industry by eliminating les maîtrises (ensembles of foremen and team heads) and les jurandes (the responsibilities of jurymen). Séguier opposed his reforms and led the struggle in the Parlement of Paris, creating the impression that he protected those who profited from the old way of doing business. Séguier favored a political system in which the government exercised a political and decision-making role in economic matters. However, he did recognize the abuse of the corporate system in Paris and made appropriate recommendations. By taking Dubarle's defense earlier in his career, Séguier perhaps softened the image as champion of the economically powerful and took on the look of protector of the innocent, lower-level bourgeois. See Chagniot, Nouvelle Histoire de Paris, 38, 285, 350.

63. Maza discusses the widespread interest in trial briefs: “The trial briefs and other court-room literature examined in this book also belong to the category of works that, though now forgotten, were immensely popular and influential in their time—published in the tens of thousands, eagerly awaited, devoured by readers, and dissected by critics.” Maza, Private Lives and Public Affairs, 8. She develops arguments in her book based on the heavily fictionalized qualities of the most popular mémoires. She also stresses the relationship between author and readers—“about how the former appealed with increasing openness to the latter to serve as judges and witnesses to the truth and righteousness of a given case.” Ibid., 9. Maza mentions “several texts describing mob scenes around bookseller's shops and lawyers’ houses when an eagerly awaited trial brief was finally made available to the public.” Ibid., 2.

64. The ethos and manners of Parisian high society attach “primary or even exclusive importance to ordered social existence, to life within a public system of values and gestures, to the social techniques that further this life and one's position in it, and hence to knowledge about society and its forms of comportment.” Brooks, The Novel ofWorldliness, 4.

65. This was my experience when I accidentally discovered the brief in the Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris. It read like a short, intense novel that magnetized my attention and that I visualized as a powerful movie.