First edition. 8vo. Publisher's printed wrappers, a little toned. 45, [3]pp. Marseille, Typographie et Lithographie Bernard et Durbec, 1885.
Very rare: the trial transcript of Leon Roubaud, a notary in Marseille, who was involved in the Marquis de Rays disastrous colony at Port-Breton.
Roubaud acted as one of the agents for the Marquis and was crucial to the running of the scheme. He was also a notary in the Marseille municipal office and is asked first about those accounts being 289,000 francs in deficit. Here he energetically pleads his innocence in so aggressive a manner the judge implores him to calm down. In response to further questioning he gives his side of the story: acting in good faith in response to encouraging news coming in from the colony in 1881 and seeing the missionaries set to depart. Two witnesses are called who affirm the honesty and excellence of Roubaud's character and then a long statement from his lawyer, in which he suggests that Roubaud couldn't have acted in bad faith and frames the entire colony as an example of bravery in the service of human conquest over the world whose only flaw was that the land in New Ireland didn't technically belong to the Marquis de Rays.
Not in OCLC, not in Libraryhub, not BnF.
