FullReads

The gendarmes were mounting the staircase. Juana grasped the pistol, aimed it at Diard, holding him, in spite of his cries, by the throat; then she blew his brains out and flung the weapon on the ground.

At that instant the door was opened violently. The public prosecutor, followed by an examining judge, a doctor, a sheriff, and a posse of gendarmes, all the representatives, in short, of human justice, entered the room.

“What do you want?” asked Juana.

“Is that Monsieur Diard?” said the prosecutor, pointing to the dead body bent double on the floor.

“Yes, monsieur.”

“Your gown is covered with blood, madame.”

“Do you not see why?” replied Juana.

She went to the little table and sat down, taking up the volume of Cervantes; she was pale, with a nervous agitation which she nevertheless controlled, keeping it wholly inward.

“Leave the room,” said the prosecutor to the gendarmes.

Then he signed to the examining judge and the doctor to remain.

“Madame, under the circumstances, we can only congratulate you on the death of your husband,” he said. “At least he has died as a soldier should, whatever crime his passions may have led him to commit. His act renders negatory that of justice. But however we may desire to spare you at such a moment, the law requires that we should make an exact report of all violent deaths. You will permit us to do our duty?”

“May I go and change my dress?” she asked, laying down the volume.

“Yes, madame; but you must bring it back to us. The doctor may need it.”

“It would be too painful for madame to see me operate,” said the doctor, understanding the suspicions of the prosecutor. “Messieurs,” he added, “I hope you will allow her to remain in the next room.”

The magistrates approved the request of the merciful physician, and Felicie was permitted to attend her mistress. The judge and the prosecutor talked together in a low voice. Officers of the law are very unfortunate in being forced to suspect all, and to imagine evil everywhere. By dint of supposing wicked intentions, and of comprehending them, in order to reach the truth hidden under so many contradictory actions, it is impossible that the exercise of their dreadful functions should not, in the long run, dry up at their source the generous emotions they are constrained to repress. If the sensibilities of the surgeon who probes into the mysteries of the human body end by growing callous, what becomes of those of the judge who is incessantly compelled to search the inner folds of the soul? Martyrs to their mission, magistrates are all their lives in mourning for their lost illusions; crime weighs no less heavily on them than on the criminal. An old man seated on the bench is venerable, but a young judge makes a thoughtful person shudder. The examining judge in this case was young, and he felt obliged to say to the public prosecutor,–

“Do you think that woman was her husband’s accomplice? Ought we to take her into custody? Is it best to question her?”

The prosecutor replied, with a careless shrug of his shoulders,–

“Montefiore and Diard were two well-known scoundrels. The maid evidently knew nothing of the crime. Better let the thing rest there.”

The doctor performed the autopsy, and dictated his report to the sheriff. Suddenly he stopped, and hastily entered the next room.

“Madame–” he said.

Juana, who had removed her bloody gown, came towards him.

“It was you,” he whispered, stooping to her ear, “who killed your husband.”

“Yes, monsieur,” she replied.

The doctor returned and continued his dictation as follows,–

“And, from the above assemblage of facts, it appears evident that the said Diard killed himself voluntarily and by his own hand.”

“Have you finished?” he said to the sheriff after a pause.

“Yes,” replied the writer.

The doctor signed the report. Juana, who had followed him into the room, gave him one glance, repressing with difficulty the tears which for an instant rose into her eyes and moistened them.

“Messieurs,” she said to the public prosecutor and the judge, “I am a stranger here, and a Spaniard. I am ignorant of the laws, and I know no one in Bordeaux. I ask of you one kindness: enable me to obtain a passport for Spain.”

“One moment!” cried the examining judge. “Madame, what has become of the money stolen from the Marquis de Montefiore?”

“Monsieur Diard,” she replied, “said something to me vaguely about a heap of stones, under which he must have hidden it.”

“Where?”

“In the street.”

The two magistrates looked at each other. Juana made a noble gesture and motioned to the doctor.

“Monsieur,” she said in his ear, “can I be suspected of some infamous action? I! The pile of stones must be close to the wall of my garden. Go yourself, I implore you. Look, search, find that money.”

The doctor went out, taking with him the examining judge, and together they found Montefiore’s treasure.

Within two days Juana had sold her cross to pay the costs of a journey. On her way with her two children to take the diligence which would carry her to the frontiers of Spain, she heard herself being called in the street. Her dying mother was being carried to a hospital, and through the curtains of her litter she had seen her daughter. Juana made the bearers enter a porte-cochere that was near them, and there the last interview between the mother and the daughter took place. Though the two spoke to each other in a low voice, Juan heard these parting words,–

“Mother, die in peace; I have suffered for you all.”