LITMIR.BIZ

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is said here, and which is not directly connected with the crime, will remain secret; even I will forget it immediately. Fear nothing, therefore; and, if you experience some humiliation, think that it is your punishment for the past.”

      “Alas, sir,” answered the sailor, “I have been already greatly punished; and it is a long time since my troubles began. Money, wickedly acquired, brings no good. On arriving home, I bought the wretched meadow for much more than it was worth; and the day I walked over it, feeling that is was actually mine, closed my happiness. Claudine was a coquette; but she had a great many other vices. When she realised how much money we had these vices showed themselves, just like a fire, smouldering at the bottom of the hold, bursts forth when you open the hatches. From slightly greedy as she had been, she became a regular glutton. In our house there was feasting without end. Whenever I went to sea, she would entertain the worst women in the place; and there was nothing too good or too expensive for them. She would get so drunk that she would have to be put to bed. Well, one night, when she thought me at Rouen, I returned unexpectedly. I entered, and found her with a man. And such a man, sir! A miserable looking wretch, ugly, dirty, stinking; shunned by everyone; in a word the bailiff’s clerk. I should have killed him, like the vermin that he was; it was my right, but he was such a pitiful object. I took him by the neck and pitched him out of the window, without opening it! It didn’t kill him. Then I fell upon my wife, and beat her until she couldn’t stir.”

      Lerouge spoke in a hoarse voice, every now and then thrusting his fists into his eyes.

      “I pardoned her,” he continued; “but the man who beats his wife and then pardons her is lost. In the future, she took better precautions, became a greater hypocrite, and that was all. In the meanwhile, Madame Gerdy took back her child; and Claudine had nothing more to restrain her. Protected and counselled by her mother, whom she had taken to live with us, on the pretence of looking after Jacques, she managed to deceive me for more than a year. I thought she had given up her bad habits, but not at all; she lived a most disgraceful life. My house became the resort of all the good-for-nothing rogues in the country, for whom my wife brought out bottles of wine and brandy, whenever I was away at sea, and they got drunk promiscuously. When money failed, she wrote to the count or his mistress, and the orgies continued. Occasionally I had doubts which disturbed me; and then without reason, for a simple yes or no, I would beat her until I was tired, and then I would forgive her, like a coward, like a fool. It was a cursed life. I don’t know which gave me the most pleasure, embracing her or beating her. My neighbors despised me, and turned their backs on me; they believed me an accomplice or a willing dupe. I heard, afterwards, that they believed I profited by my wife’s misconduct; while in reality she paid her lovers. At all events, people wondered where all the money came from that was spent in my house. To distinguish me from a cousin of mine, also named Lerouge, they tacked an infamous word on to my name. What disgrace! And I knew nothing of all the scandal, no, nothing. Was I not the husband? Fortunately, though, my poor father was dead.”

      M. Daburon pitied the speaker sincerely.

      “Rest a while, my friend,” he said; “compose yourself.”

      “No,” replied the sailor, “I would rather get through with it quickly. One man, the priest, had the charity to tell me of it. If ever he should want Lerouge! Without losing a minute, I went and saw a lawyer, and asked him how an honest sailor who had had the misfortune to marry a hussy ought to act. He said that nothing could be done. To go to law was simply to publish abroad one’s own dishonour, while a separation would accomplish nothing. When once a man has given his name to a woman, he told me, he cannot take it back; it belongs to her for the rest of her days, and she has a right to dispose of it. She may sully it, cover it with mire, drag it from wine shop to wine shop, and her husband can do nothing. That being the case, my course was soon taken. That same day, I sold the fatal meadow, and sent the proceeds of it to Claudine, wishing to keep nothing of the price of shame. I then had a document drawn up, authorising her to administer our property, but not allowing her either to sell or mortgage it. Then I wrote her a letter in which I told her that she need never expect to hear of me again, that I was nothing more to her, and that she might look upon herself as a widow. That same night I went away with my son.”

      “And what became of your wife after your departure?”

      “I cannot say, sir; I only know that she quitted the neighbourhood a year after I did.”

      “You have never lived with her since?”

      “Never.”

      “But you were at her house three days before the crime was committed.”

      “That is true, but it was absolutely necessary. I had had much trouble to find her, no one knew what had become of her. Fortunately my notary was able to procure Madame Gerdy’s address; he wrote to her, and that is how I learnt that Claudine was living at La Jonchere. I was then at Rome. Captain Gervais, who is a friend of mine, offered to take me to Paris on his boat, and I accepted. Ah, sir, what a shock I experienced when I entered her house! My wife did not know me! By constantly telling everyone that I was dead, she had without a doubt ended by believing it herself. When I told her my name, she fell back in her chair. The wretched woman had not changed in the least; she had by her side a glass and a bottle of brandy —”

      “All this doesn’t explain why you went to seek your wife.”

      “It was on Jacques’s account, sir, that I went. The youngster has grown to be a man; and he wants to marry. For that, his mother’s consent was necessary; and I was taking to Claudine a document which the notary had drawn up, and which she signed. This is it.”

      M. Daburon took the paper, and appeared to read it attentively. After a moment he asked: “Have you thought who could have assassinated your wife?”

      Lerouge made no reply.

      “Do you suspect any one?” persisted the magistrate.

      “Well, sir,” replied the sailor, “what can I say? I thought that Claudine had wearied out the people from whom she drew money, like water from a well; or else getting drunk one day, she had blabbed too freely.”

      The testimony being as complete as possible, M. Daburon dismissed Lerouge, at the same time telling him to wait for Gevrol, who would take him to a hotel, where he might wait, at the disposal of justice, until further orders.

      “All your expenses will be paid you,” added the magistrate.

      Lerouge had scarcely left, when an extraordinary, unheard of, unprecedented event took place in the magistrate’s office. Constant, the serious, impressive, immovable, deaf and dumb Constant, rose from his seat and spoke.

      He broke a silence of fifteen years. He forgot himself so far as to offer an opinion.

      “This, sir,” said he, “is a most extraordinary affair.”

      Very extraordinary, truly, thought M. Daburon, and calculated to rout all predictions, all preconceived opinions.

      Why had he, the magistrate, moved with such deplorable haste? Why before risking anything, had he not waited to possess all the elements of this important case, to hold all the threads of this complicated drama?

      Justice is accused of slowness; but it is this very slowness that constitutes its strength and surety, its almost infallibility. One scarcely knows what a time evidence takes to produce itself. There is no knowing what important testimony investigations apparently useless may reveal.

      When the entanglement of the various passions and motives seems hopeless, an unknown personage presents himself, coming from no one knows where, and it is he who explains everything.

      M. Daburon, usually the most prudent of men, had considered as simple one of the most complex of cases. He had acted in a mysterious crime, which demanded the utmost caution, as carelessly as though it were a case of simple misdemeanour. Why? Because his memory had not left him his free deliberation, judgment, and discernment. He had feared equally appearing weak and being revengeful. Thinking himself sure of his facts, he had been carried away by his animosity. And yet how often had he not asked himself: Where is duty? But then, when one is at all doubtful about

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