"To what purpose, I should like to know?
Our master is dead. Better acquaint the ladies
with what has happened."

They looked at each other inquiringly;
nobody undertook to perform the task. Prudential
considerations were uppermost; it was
needless to compromise one's self. They merely
informed the mayor of the commune (Saint
Etienne-Lardeyrol) in which the Château de
Chamblas is situated.

Next day, the second of September, a
messenger who was despatched by the mayor to
inform the ladies of the event, was astonished at
the coolness with which they received the news.
A few hours afterwards the Procureur du Roi
and a juge d'instruction arrived at Chamblas
and opened a preliminary inquiry. They found
the corpse still stretched on the kitchen table.
A surgeon, who had been sent for, took from
the body a bullet and a couple of buck shot.
One rib was broken and one lung destroyed.
Death must have been instantaneous.

During the examination a man entered,
dressed like a person of the middle class, with
striped olive-green velveteen trousers, and wearing
a black crape round his hat. His manner
was that of a steward or maître d'hôtel in the
exercise of his accustomed functions. His
countenance was calm, but indicative of great
energy. His complexion was dark; his raven-
black hair covered his forehead down to the
eyebrows. His face, and especially his lips,
were swollen with recent marks of small-pox.
When his eyes met the body, they sparkled
with an expression of ferocious hatred.
Although only a rapid flash, it was noticed by
three professional observers, a brigadier and
two gendarmes. They exchanged glances;
the same thought had struck them all: " That
man is the murderer!"

This person advanced and informed the
magistrates that, in an adjoining room, a repast
was served for them and some members of the
Marcellange family. He waited at table. A
notary there, M. Méplain, one of the victim's
relations, could not repress a gesture of disgust
when he approached him to change his plate.
The juge d'instruction inquired the name and
condition of this repulsive attendant. He was
told that it was Jacques Besson, once swineherd,
then farm servant at Chamblas, and then
the ladies' confidential man after the separation
of the husband and wife. M. de Marcellange
had dismissed him in consequence of his
insolent behaviour.

The juge d'instruction whispered to the
brigadier, "There is a fellow with crape round his
hat who I fancy is not sorry for what has
happened."

"It is possible," said the brigadier, after a
searching glance at the individual, " that I may
have to arrest that important personage."

At the funeral, relations, neighbours,
servants, everybody down to the driver who
brought the ladies' confidential man to Chamblas,
followed the body to the grave, many in tears.
Jacques Besson alone remained at the château,
eating in a corner, with a thoughtful air.

The authorities tried hard to discover the
guilty party; several hundred witnesses were
interrogated; in vain. Public opinion
informed them that M. de Marcellange had not a
single enemy in the neighbourhood; his death
was the subject of universal regret. Darkness
appeared to thicken round the crime. The
peasantry, a needy and cautious race, could hardly
be got to utter a word. It seemed as if their
mouths were closed by some mysterious
influence, the result of terror rather than of
corruption.

As soon as the news was spread abroad,
Baron Méchin, the Préfet of the Département de
l'Allier, remembered that, at an evening party,
some time before M. de Marcellange's death,
a lady had requested to be presented to him.
This lady, M. de Marcellange's sister, expressed
her fears for her brother's safety during a
journey he had undertaken. On being asked
the reason of her apprehensions, she replied
that her brother, whose interests were opposed
to those of his wife and his mother-in-law, had
for some time past dreaded attempts on his life.
"If I am murdered," he often said, "avenge
my death."

On inquiry, it was found that, during the
last year of his life, M. de Marcellange had
been filled with these apprehensions. A
presentiment of evil took possession of him. Even
before the rupture with his wife was complete,
he believed that poison had been administered
to him in an omelette served by Marie Boudon,
his wife's maid. He unhesitatingly attributed
the violent pains that followed to criminal
designs. The death of his two children, taken off
so soon one after another, excited in his mind
the most horrible suspicions. Latterly, he often
observed to his intimate friends that, but for the
noise made by poor Lafarge's case, he would
have suffered the same wretched fate.

Jacques Besson was the person whom he
regarded as his future murderer. This individual,
during the sixteen years he had been in
the service of the De Chamblas family, had
gradually acquired over them an ascendency
which he could never extend to M. de
Marcellange. When the latter, to check his
forwardness, reminded him of his origin, it
excited great indignation, which found
expression in mysterious threats. His insolence
increased with the family discord. He
vehemently sided with the ladies, and had the
audacity to insult his master by contemptuous
and indecent sarcasms. M. de Marcellange's
fears increased to such a pitch that he
resolved to let the estate, to return to his native
home, and to live with his aged father at
Brandons, near Moulins. Preparations were
already made to receive him. He had proposed
starting the very day after that on which he was
shot, at the early age of thirty-four.

After Besson's dismissal by the husband, he
had been received by the wife and the mother-
in-law, as if they thought his conduct praiseworthy.
They petted the base-born menial all
the while that they treated the husband as " a
clerk," and would never pardon his " being so