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'The Parliament of Paris often permitted the tenant of a haunted house to break his contract. Ghosts or no ghosts, Mirabel's counsel said, there was a treasure. In his receipt Auguier, to deceive a simple peasant, partially disguised his hand. Auguier's alibi is worthless, he might easily have been at Marseilles and at Pertuis on the same day: the distance is eight leagues.
Madame Auguier, and her sister, Madame Campan, continued with their royal lady until the next stage in that miserable downfall of all that was high and noble in unhappy France. She lived through the horrors of the Revolution, and her daughter became the wife of Marshal Ney.
The case was allowed to come on, there were sixteen witnesses. A woman named Caillot swore to Mirabel's having told her about the ghost: she saw the treasure excavated, saw the bags, and recognised the ribbon. A man had seen Mirabel on his way to give Auguier his bags, and, indeed, saw him do so, and receive a piece of paper. He also found, next day, a gold coin on the scene of the interview.
Unluckily the evidence, for facts not for folklore, is worthless till it has stood the severest cross-examination. Sir Walter Scott on rarity of ghostly evidence. His pamphlet for the Bannatyne Club. His other examples. Case of Mirabel. The spectre, the treasure, the deposit repudiated. Trials of Auguier and Mirabel. The case of Clenche's murder. The murder of Sergeant Davies.
Mirabel and Marguerite Caillot, his first witness, who had deposed to his telling her about the ghost, and to seeing the excavation of the packet, were now arrested, while Auguier remained in prison. Marguerite now denied her original deposition, she had only spoken to oblige Mirabel.
At half-past four they heard musket shots, and loud shouts, and while one awakened the Queen, the other, Madame Auguier, flew towards the place whence the noise came. As she opened the door, she found one of the royal bodyguards, with his face covered with blood, holding his musket so as to bar the door while the furious mob were striking at him.
Auguier appealed: his advocate urged the absurdity of a ghost-story on a priori grounds: if there was no ghost, then there was no treasure: if there was a treasure, would not the other digger have secured his share? That digger, Bernard, was not called. Then Auguier pled an alibi, he was eight leagues away when he was said to have received the treasure.
Well it is that the darkening firmament does but show the stars, and that when treason and murder surge round the fated chambers of royalty, their foulness and violence do but enhance the loyal self-sacrifice of such doorkeepers as Catherine Douglas, Madame Auguier, or M. de Miomandre. 'Such deeds can woman's spirit do, O Catherine Douglas, brave and true!
On February 18, 1729, Auguier was acquitted, Mirabel was condemned to the torture, and to the galley, for life. Marguerite Caillot was fined ten francs. Under torture Mirabel accused Barthelemy of having made him bring his charge against Auguier, supplying him with the forged receipt and with the sham document, the summons to restore the gold to Madame Placasse.
He turned to the lady, and cried, 'Save the Queen, madame, they are come to murder her! Quick as lightning, Madame Auguier shut and bolted the door, rushed to the Queen's bedside, and dragged her to the opposite door, with a petticoat just thrown over her. Behold, the door was fastened on the other side!
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