“A Fabric of Infamy”: The Sodomitical Life of Jean François de Rougemont

Men who sought sex with men, unlike women who sought sex with women, often did so in public places in eighteenth-century Paris. As a result the archives contain hundreds of reports about men the police called infâmes, “infamous types,” in the 1720s.¹ Michel Rey, who explored sexual relations between Parisian men in a number of articles published in the 1980s and 1990s, used the separate morals series but not the regular prisoners series in the Archives de la Bastille in his research.² The former series includes thirty-six, and the latter series includes sixty-seven dossiers from 1723 alone, with minimal overlap between them.³

I have used complementary documents from both series, especially the two memoirs appended to this analysis, to explore the exceptional case of Jean François de Rougemont, which provides a detailed account not only of the arrest of an infâme but also of his adventures during the preceding decades.⁴ The first memoir, four pages of small script, resembles dozens of other records of arrests in some but not all ways. Like most cases, this one involves encounters and discussions in the gardens of the Luxembourg and Tuileries palaces. Unlike most cases, however, this one does not involve a young man employed by the police to entrap sodomites in these locations without actually engaging in “infamous” practices himself. It does involve a third party, an unnamed man whom we might as well call Monsieur X. Monsieur X had already met both Rougemont and Jean Travers, who were arrested together on 22 April 1723. He reported his conversations and their activities to the police. The second memoir, forty pages of large script, is much more unusual if not simply unique. No other dossier from 1723 or perhaps any other year contains such a narrative of previous misconduct constructed through consultations with individuals who had known the infâme in question.

Sometime during the weeks preceding 22 April 1723, Rougemont encountered X in the street and invited him into a tavern, where they took a private room and enjoyed some wine. Rougemont entertained X with tales from his own past intended to impress and entice. He discussed his travels through Italy with some noblemen, his conversion to Catholicism, and his relations with a “very pretty boy” named Petit, presumably younger than himself—although we cannot be sure, because the French word garçon was and is routinely applied to assistants and bachelors of any age and does not always mean “boy” in the English sense.⁵ Rougemont “wanted to fool around with the man and put his hand into his pants,” but X rejected the overture, so Rougemont left in a huff. Some days before the 22nd, X observed Travers “walking in the areas in the Tuileries where infâmes gather, seeking to prostitute himself or to corrupt young folks by showing his cock to them and to all those he judged to be of his taste,” that is to say, those who, based on their appearance and behavior, presumably shared his sexual interest in men. Travers recognized and accosted X in the Tuileries at noon on the 22nd, advised him not to hide “who he was,” that is to say, a sodomite, and assured him that he himself was “up for anything,” a phrase used by more than a few men to describe themselves and interest others. Like other infâmes, Travers knew where to go, what do to and say, and how to read gestures and language.

Travers, aged thirty-three and single, had already scheduled a rendezvous with Rougemont, aged thirty and single, in the Luxembourg that night at seven. We do not know, unfortunately, when and where they met for the first time—perhaps in one of the royal gardens or through mutual friends. It was common at the time for sexual connections to involve one older and one younger male, so the modest difference in their ages was somewhat unusual, and so was the fact that Travers invited X to join them. To his...