caa a22 4500 388082615 CHVBK 20180307125221.0 cr unu---uuuuu 161130s1999 xx s 000 0 eng 10.2307/744017 doi S0738248000007161 pii (NATIONALLICENCE)cambridge-10.2307/744017 Aricò Santo L. A Lawyer's Defense of a Wine Merchant against a Carpenter's Deposition: A Story about Friendship and Betrayal [Elektronische Daten] [Santo L. Aricò] In 1770, Antoine-Louis Séguier, the avocat général (king's advocate) of the Parlement of Paris, defended Jean-Baptiste Dubarle, a Parisian wine merchant, against charges of theft, seduction, kidnapping, and adultery initiated by a carpenter, Eustache Chefdeville. For all of the offenses, Chefdeville demanded monetary reparation. The case, summarized in a mémoire, connects the history of family law in France under the ancien régime to the skillful use of lawyerly forensics. But it also relates to literary portrayals of social scapegraces who betray the esteemed values of friendship and gratitude: in fact, this member of Paris's menu peuple emerges from the pages of the case abstract as a dissembling traitor. Séguier's legal brief, viewed as a work of fiction, projects Chefdeville as an ungrateful betrayer who feigns comradery. In Séguier's telling, this disfigured pariah, albeit socially inferior, takes his place next to the deceptive worldlings described in many eighteenth-century novels. Like them, he violates the sacred laws of sincerity, turning himself into a moral pervert. Séguier's mémoire is rich precisely because it demonstrates how a skilled lawyer attempting to win his case adopts the form of a story characterized by all the literary qualities of the day—love, friendship, avarice, and betrayal. It illustrates a classic legal approach and also reads like a novel from beginning to end. Copyright © the American Society for Legal History, Inc. 1999 Law and History Review Cambridge University Press 17/2(1999), 365-384 0738-2480 17:2<365 1999 17 LHR https://doi.org/10.2307/744017 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 other jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.2307/744017 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Aricò Santo L. NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Law and History Review Cambridge University Press 17/2(1999), 365-384 0738-2480 17:2<365 1999 17 LHR CC0 http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0 nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-cambridge