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Updated: June 25, 2025
``Excuse me, please, everybody, Kostolo replied, unabashed. ``I don't know quite how to express myself, but surely what I have done is quite the common thing? I had no means of living but from what Mme Boursier gave me. The murmurs evoked by the reply Kostolo treated with lofty disdain. He seemed to find his audience somewhat prudish.
Having airily answered a question in a way that left him without any reputation, he would sweep the court with his eyes, preening himself like a peacock. He was asked about a journey Boursier had proposed making. At what time had Boursier intended making the trip? ``Before his death, Kostolo replied.
For some time before the death of the epicier there had been hanging about the establishment a Greek called Kostolo. He was a manservant out of employ, and not, even on the surface, quite the sort of fellow that a respectable couple like the Boursiers might be expected to accept as a family friend. But such, no less, had been the Greek's position with the household.
All this chatter of poison, particularly by Kostolo and the widow, together with the persistent rumours of an adulterous association between the pair, gave colour to suspicions of a criminal complicity, and these in process of time came to the ears of the officers of justice. The two doctors were summoned by the Procureur-General, who questioned them closely regarding Boursier's illness.
Kostolo, in addition to repeating outside the house his opinion regarding the blueness of the dead Boursier's nails, began, several days after the funeral, to brag to neighbours and friends of the warm relationship existing between himself and the widow. He dropped hints of a projected marriage.
So much so that, although Kostolo had no money and apparently no prospects, Boursier himself had asked him to be godfather to a niece. The epicier found the Greek amusing, and, on falling so suddenly ill, made no objection when Kostolo took it on himself to act as nurse, and to help in the preparing of drinks and medicines that were prescribed.
Later she had said she never had been intimate with the Greek. But Kostolo, `` barefaced enough for anything, had openly declared the nature of his relations with her. Then Mme Boursier, after maintaining that she had been no more than interested in Kostolo, finding pleasure in his company, had been constrained to confess that she had misconducted herself with the Greek in the dead man's room.
Why should she murder a fine merchant like Boursier for a doubtful quantity like Kostolo? He spoke of the happy relationship that had existed between husband and wife, and, in proof of their kindness for each other, told of a comedy interlude which had taken place on the Sunday morning. Boursier, he said, had to get up before his wife that morning, rising at six o'clock.
There was, however, sufficient gravity in the evidences on hand to justify a definite indictment of Mme Boursier and Nicolas Kostolo, the first of having poisoned her husband, and the second of being accessory to the deed. The pair were brought to trial on the 27th of November, 1823, before the Seine Assize Court, M. Hardouin presiding.
The answer was unintentionally funny, but the Greek took credit for the amusement it created in court. He conceived himself a humorist, and the fact coloured all his subsequent answers. Kostolo said that he had called to see Boursier on the first day of his illness at three in the afternoon. He himself had insisted on helping to nurse the invalid.
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