Father Chaubard's Awful Dilemma

April 26, 1700, was a feast day in the French village of Croix-Daurade, so the widower Saturnin Siadoux, 60-year-old owner of a small oil-making business, decided to mark the occasion with a special dinner for his family, consisting of his widowed sister Mirailhe, his three sons and two daughters. They invited two neighbors and the local priest, Father Pierre-Celestin Chaubard, to join them in the celebration.

The feast was prepared, the guests assembled. But Father Chaubard did not appear. Nor did the host, Saturnin Siadoux, who was expected back that evening from a trip to a nearby city. As the sun set, his family and neighbors began to worry. Was he detained on the road? Why did he send no note? He'd left special instructions for the feast when he departed, and he was unlikely to neglect the event. His family recalled that he had been elusive about the nature of the trip; he would not tell them why he was traveling to Narbonne.

The youngest son, Thomas Siadoux, volunteered to seek out the priest and found him alone in his home. In answer to Thomas's queries, Father Chaubard said that he was in bad spirits--and he certainly appeared to be bothered--and he had to be coerced into returning with Thomas to the feast at the Siadoux home. While there, the priest again blamed his extraordinarily sour mood upon low spirits, and before long, he surprised them all by slipping away from the assembly.

Saturnin Siadoux returned home the next day--on a litter carried by police officials. He was dead, murdered, stabbed eleven times, found near the river on his route home. They could offer his shocked and grieving children no clews to the identity of the killer, nor any motive, for Siadoux had not been robbed.

The sons of Siadoux thought immediately of the priest. He knows something, they thought. So they lured Father Chaubard to the family home and began a lengthy and aggressive interrogation. Explain your behavior! they cried. Tell us what you know!

I cannot, Father Chaubard said. It was said to me in the confessional. The sons' entreaties turned violent, and they threatened to hurt Father Chaubard if he did not disclose the name of the man who murdered their father. Still his lips were sealed. So they suspended Father Chaubard over a vat of boiling linseed oil and declared that they would kill him outright if he did not tell them what he knew.

Father Chaubard finally broke under their interrogation. The man who killed Saturnin Siadoux, the man who confessed the murder soon after it was committed, was the man who was wooing his widowed sister, the priest said. The butcher of Toulouse, Cantegrel. The reason? Saturnin Siadoux had heard ugly rumors about the butcher, and he had traveled to Narbonne to confirm the gossip that Cantegrel was already married. Cantegrel followed Siadoux, saw that he visited the home of Cantegrel's wife, and killed him to keep his marriage a secret.

Upon learning this ugly truth, they unhanded Father Chaubard. They decided to go to the police with the story, heedless of what it would mean for the priest. But Father Chaubard knew the consequences of violating the confessional sacrament would be harsh. "I forgive you," the priest said to them. "Pray for me when my time comes."

The Siadoux brothers thought little of this; was their father's life and brutal murder not more important than the priest's ecclesiastical career? What did they care if he was defrocked or even thrown out of the church? They repeated the story of the confession to the magistrate, and it resulted in the arrest of the butcher Cantegrel. But the three Siadoux brothers were also arrested, as was Father Chaubard.

The butcher was convicted--not on the basis of his confession, but upon other facts that were gathered against him--and he was executed by being broken upon the wheel.

The three brothers were also convicted of their offense against Father Chaubard and sentenced to die by hanging. But there was a great public agitation at this decision, and the executions had to be delayed, the brothers locked in jail; after a time, they managed to escape with the help of the jailer's daughter, and the village rejoiced for them. They were hanged in effigy, but by then had begun new lives elsewhere.

For Father Chaubard, there was no mercy. His sin was a grievous one and could never be forgiven. He was condemned to have his arms and legs broken on the wheel and then to be burned alive at the stake. At the cries of horror that arose, the authorities begrudingly agreed to modify the sentence: Father Chaubard would be broken on the wheel, but killed before he was burned. And such was his fate.

It is not known what ever happened to the sons of Siadoux, but if they had any hearts at all, they heeded the priest's last request and prayed for him when his time came.

Source:

The father of the detective novel, Wilkie Collins, is the only person known to have written in English about the Siadoux case. The Cauldron of Oil, in Cases Worth Looking At, 1861.

Comments

[Steve]

You know, this is a general comment, but the more I read entries by you, the more I conclude you must be one of the most intelligent bloggers I've ever had the pleasure to be acquainted with. Every entry is very satisfying -- a nicely crafted combination of the intellectual and mysterious each time.