The others shuddered, moved by that account of the lad springing so gaily into the room where he was to meet such a tragic death. And Madame Alexandre gently gave expression to a thought which suggested itself to all: 'It was hardly prudent to let the lad sleep by himself in this lonely room, so easily reached from the square. The shutters ought to have been barred at night.'
'Oh! he fastened them,' said Mademoiselle Rouzaire.
'Did he do so last night while you were here?' inquired Marc, intervening once more.
'No, when I left him to go to my rooms he had lighted his candle and was arranging some pictures on his table, with the window wide open.'
Mignot, the assistant-master, now joined in the conversation. 'This window made Monsieur Simon anxious,' he said; 'he wished he could have given the lad another room. He often recommended him to fasten the shutters carefully. But I fear that the child paid little heed.'
The two clerics in their turn had now decided to quit the room. Father Philibin, after laying the number of Le Petit Beaumontais and the copy-slip on the table, had ceased speaking, preferring to look and listen; and he followed very attentively each word and gesture that came from Marc, while Brother Fulgence, for his part, continued to relieve himself with lamentations. Eventually, the Jesuit, who seemed to read the young schoolmaster's thoughts in his eyes, remarked to him: 'So you think that some tramp, some night prowler, seeing the boy alone in this room, may have got in by the window?'
From prudence Marc would express no positive opinion. 'Oh! I think nothing,' said he; 'it is for the law to seek and find the murderer. However, the bed has not been opened, the boy was certainly about to get into it, and this seems to show that, the crime must have been committed shortly after ten o'clock. Suppose that he busied himself for half an hour at the utmost with his pictures, and that he then saw a stranger spring into his room. In that case he would have raised a cry, which would certainly have been heard. You heard nothing, did you, mademoiselle?'
'No, nothing,' the schoolmistress replied. 'I myself went to bed about half-past ten. The neighbourhood was very quiet. The storm did not awaken me until about one o'clock this morning.'
'Very little of the candle has been burnt,' Mignot now observed. 'The murderer must have blown it out as he went off by the window, which he left wide open, as I found it just now.'
These remarks, which lent some weight to the theory of a prowler springing into the room, ill-using and murdering the boy, increased the horror-fraught embarrassment of the bystanders. All wished to avoid being compromised, and therefore kept to themselves their thoughts respecting the impossibilities or improbabilities of the theory which had been propounded. After a pause, however, as the mayor and the gendarmes did not appear, Father Philibin inquired: 'Is not Monsieur Simon at Maillebois?'