Small Change Counterfeiting and the Borders of Law, Country and Love

International audienceFrom 1893 to 1898, Francesco Pastorelli devoted himself at least three times to the manufacturing and distribution of counterfeit money. Caught up with by French justice in 1898, its arrest and its judgment open a window on the life of a small forger and his social environment, as on the legal and monetary issues raised by this artisanal crime. But beyond counterfeit money, many ambiguities appear, as if it revealed the falseness within human relations and feelings. Thus, close and even less close relationships to Pastorelli hardly seem constrained by the use of his forged coins \textendash at most they would abstain from manufacturing them \textendash as they benefitted from Pastorelli's pragmatic generosity, who thus broadcasted out its production. Each actor of this little drama sees herself thus assigned by the others a social position, either bad lot, prostitute or policeman, that evolved subtly according to the progress of the investigation and judicial instruction. It is then necessary to relativize the immorality of the witnesses as they tried to have Pastorelli bear the heaviest of the charges, i.e. to transform their stories of life, their punishable behaviours, their moral defects, in elements of charge or discharge. Thus are made visible to us the border between order and vice simultaneously with the many bridges between these two polar positions. After quickly having recalled the genesis, the course and the penal conclusion of the Pastorelli affair, we will highlight the ambiguous links between counterfeit money and true feelings