"Well, we took the spade, and both of us went back into the garden and took up the mat where we had hidden the body. Who was surprised, monsieur? There was nothing under it; somebody had stolen our corpse! We looked everywhere, turned everything over: nothing, monsieur, nothing! We thought we had gone mad and had dreamed everything that had happened that night, and I ran back into the house to see if the money wasn't a vision.
"Well, monsieur, if you were not here questioning us, we might believe that the devil had been acting a farce for us; for the drawer in which I had put the money and jewels was open, and it had all flown away from the house while we were in the garden, just as the dead man had flown away from the garden while we were in the house."
As she finished her story, La Caille-Bottée bewailed the loss of the money, and the lay brother, who only awaited an opportunity to weep, shed tears too manifestly sincere for the marquis to entertain any doubt as to the strange and twofold theft committed on their premises, of a full purse and a deceased dead man, as the gardener said in a doleful tone.
[XLVII]
During this duet of lamentations, the marquis reflected.
"Tell me, my friends," he said, "did you see no footprints in your garden, no indication that your house had been entered by violent means?"
"We paid no attention to that matter for some time," replied La Caille-Bottée, "we were too much upset; but when it was daylight, we examined everything as well as we could. There was nothing unusual in the house. They must have come in as soon as our backs were turned; we left the door and the drawer open, and the money in plain sight; we were much to blame for that, alas!"
"In that case," observed the marquis, "the deceased did not go away unaided, and had not only friends to take away his remains, but others to recover his money and jewels."
"I imagine, monsieur, that there were only two of them for the first task, and one for the last, and that one not connected with the others; for we discovered the prints of two pair of feet on our flower-beds, going toward the fence on the Briantes side, and those feet seemed to have had on boots or pattens; while on the gravel in our little yard, there were the marks of bare feet, little child's feet, going toward the town. But, as there was already water in the paths, we couldn't discover anything outside of our own place."
Bois-Doré reasoned thus mentally: