What pretty patterns! There are two hearts, some arrows, some flowers ...Ah! those beautiful flowers.” The clerk raised up the lungs from which hung the heart.
“‘"It is a beautiful pluck,” said he, “and has not been trufled. The heart is good.”
“‘"Yes, he had a good heart!” groaned Mme. Houdry, who was all at once terrified at what she had said.
“‘Thereupon the clerk began to weep, and without knowing why, dipped his hands in a pail of cold water which was placed beside the boiler, looking for the head of the animal, and he drew out a head. But when she saw the head, Mme. Houdry fainted, for she had recognized the head of her husband.
“‘Mme. Houdry had immediately recognized her husband’s head, and the clerk himself examined it more closely, to be sure that it was the head of his master. It was a well-cut head-well refined, well scalded, well scraped. The moustache and hair had been shaved, as they should be, and but for something unforeseen, if need be, the head of the butcher would have passed for the head of a calf.
“‘The clerk in his turn fainted, and let the head of M. Houdry roll away.
“‘Some minutes later the tragedy was discovered, judging from the disturbance in the quarter.’
“The journalist,” said Théophraste, “was not of the opinion that the calf had decapitated the butcher, and that also was put before Cartouche’s name-that poor Cartouche.” He shrugged his shoulders once more, and then, having raised his eyes above the paper, he sought in the two corners of the dining-room, where M. Lecamus and his wife had taken refuge. They had disappeared. He called them and they did not answer. He tried to open the door of the landing, and it would not open. He then rushed to the chimney, which was large enough for him to get up, and scaled it with the same facility as he had descended the chimney when the boiler was beginning to boil at M. Houdry’s, the same morning that he had decapitated that unfortunate man.