The Picot family were cursed with ill luck, and the Almighty made them pay very dear for the wealth He bestowed upon them.
Four years previously Stanislas Picot, it will be remembered, was killed when out shooting. Two years before, the farm had been burnt down, and now to-day the eldest son was accused of murder.
The inquiry was actively pursued, and it was decided that a visit should be paid on the following day to the spot where the murder had taken place: the Government prosecutor had arrived from Soissons.
I shall always recollect the terrible effect the sight of that procession made upon me, as it crossed the great square. The town authorities marched at its head, with the representative of the king; next came Picot between two rows of police, some before, others behind him; then the shepherd between two more rows of police placed in the same way; after these the whole town either followed the procession or stood at their doors and windows.
They all walked fast, for it rained. People talked of equality in the eye of the law, and the justices had thought to carry out this precept by placing the two men on foot each exactly the same, with an equal number of police to guard them.
But they had forgotten the different impression this would make on two such different natures, the one belonging to the head and the other to the foot of the social ladder.
Most assuredly the man at the top of the scale suffered all the tortures of the situation.
The other man was almost triumphant; he had by a few words dragged down to the same level as himself a man who had been far higher in the social scale only a week before, a man whose bread he had eaten, whose paid servant he was, and before whom he never spoke save cap in hand.
So a debased light of exultant satisfaction radiated from the man's low countenance.