croix ask my aunt to go away with him—he begged her to go—to Italy, I think he said. Is there a place called Italy?"
"Yes. And how did your aunt answer?"
"She said she could not go. She was bound to Georges. Georges would kill her if she left him. Monsieur de Maucroix laughed, and said that people do not do such things nowadays. He laughed—and soon afterwards my aunt and he were both dead. I saw the blood—streams of blood."
At this point, said the report, the girl Lemarque became hysterical, and the rest of her evidence had to be postponed for another day. In the mean time the grandmother, and Barbe Girot, Marie Prévol's servant, were interrogated.
Madame Lemarque stated that her daughter was an actress at the Porte-Saint-Martin. She was very beautiful, and was more renowned for her grace and beauty than for her acting. She danced and sang and acted in fairy scenes. She was only three-and-twenty years of age at the time of her death.
Upon being asked by the judge whether her daughter led a strictly moral life, Madame Lemarque replied that her conduct was purity itself as compared with that of many ladies who acted in fairy pieces.
"But there was some one, perhaps," insinuated the judge, "there is always some one. So beautiful a woman must have had many admirers. I have her photograph here. It is an exquisite face, a beauty quite out of the common, refined, spiritual. Surely among her many admirers there must have been one whom she favoured above all the rest?"
"Yes, there was one, and it was that one who murdered my daughter and Monsieur de Maucroix. No one can doubt it."
"But you have no actual knowledge of the fact? You speak upon conjecture?"
"Who else should murder her? Whom did she ever injure, poor child? She was amiability itself—the kindest of comrades, charitable, good to everybody."
"What do you know of this person whom you suspect?"
"Nothing except that which I heard from my daughter."
"Did you never see him?"
"Never. If he had been the Emperor he could not have been more mysterious in his goings to and fro. I was never allowed to see him."
"Was he often at your daughter's apartment?"
"Very often. He used to go there after the theatre. He was devoted to her. There were some who believed that he was her husband, that he loved her too passionately to deny her anything she might ask. When she was not acting he took her abroad, to Italy—to Spain. If it were only for a holiday for a fortnight, he would carry her off to some remote village in the Italian Alps or the Pyrenees. I used to tell her that he was
