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On a hot Sunday in September, Grégoire Duval, an uneventful pharmacist from the small town of Pontarlier, walks along the banks of a local lake. He sees a pretty young woman sunbathing, topless. Giving in to a sudden impulse, he approaches and throws himself on her to kiss her. This screams; he strangles her very quickly.
The young woman's lover, Sylvain Sautral, a dull young man of modest origins, is accused of the murder, then charged and tried. Duval, the culprit of the murder, is appointed juror to the assizes which judge the young Sautral. Duval intervened many times during the trial to clarify the circumstances of the crime, allowing the acquittal of Sautral.
But the notables of the city do not consider that the acquittal constitutes a sufficient reason to exonerate Sautral; the young couple was known for their libertinism, which shocked the good provincial society which found itself in a very bourgeois café in the center of the city. The pharmacist Duval is therefore forced to give himself up in order to remove suspicion.
Yet no one wants to condemn him: perhaps everyone knew, refusing to judge one of their own. Even Sautral will refuse to face the truth; while trying to stop him from committing suicide, Duval kills him. To ward off the scandal, the superintendent and Duval's wife have him locked up in an asylum. The pharmacist finally accepts this decision, being certain of never wanting to come out of this imprisonment which fulfills his desire for punishment. (source: wikipedia)
