In the midst of such excitement it was impossible for Veronique’s friends to refrain from discussing in her presence the progress of the case and the reticence of the criminal. Her health was extremely feeble; but the doctor having advised her going out into the fresh air, she had on one occasion taken her mother’s arm and walked as far as Madame Sauviat’s house in the country, where she rested. On her return she endeavored to keep about until her husband came to his dinner, which she always served him herself. On this occasion Graslin, being detained in the court-room, did not come in till eight o’clock. She went into the dining-room as usual, and was present at a discussion which took place among a number of her friends who had assembled there.
“If my poor father were still living,” she remarked to them, “we should know more about the matter; possibly this man might never have become a criminal. I think you have all taken a singular idea about the matter. You insist that love is at the bottom of the crime, and I agree with you there; but why do you think this unknown person is a married woman? He may have loved some young girl whose father and mother would not let her marry him.”
“A young girl could, sooner or later, have married him legitimately,” replied Monsieur de Grandville. “Tascheron has no lack of patience; he had time to make sufficient means to support her while awaiting the time when all girls are at liberty to marry against the wishes of their parents; he need not have committed a crime to obtain her.”
“I did not know that a girl could marry in that way,” said Madame Graslin; “but how is it that in a town like this, where all things are known, and where everybody sees everything that happens to his neighbor, not the slightest clue to this woman has been obtained? In order to love, persons must see each other and consequently be seen. What do you really think, you magistrates?” she added, plunging a fixed look into the eyes of the procureur-general.
“We think that the woman belongs to the bourgeois or the commercial class.”
“I don’t agree with you,” said Madame Graslin. “A woman of that class does not have elevated sentiments.”
This reply drew all eyes on Veronique, and the whole company waited for an explanation of so paradoxical a speech.
“During the hours I lie awake at night I have not been able to keep my mind from dwelling on this mysterious affair,” she said slowly, “and I think I have fathomed Tascheron’s motive. I believe the person he loves is a young girl, because a married woman has interests, if not feelings, which partly fill her heart and prevent her from yielding so completely to a great passion as to leave her home. There is such a thing as a love proceeding from passion which is half maternal, and to me it is evident that this man was loved by a woman who wished to be his prop, his Providence. She must have put into her passion something of the genius that inspires the work of artists and poets, the creative force which exists in woman under another form; for it is her mission to create men, not things. Our works are our children; our children are the pictures, books, and statues of our lives. Are we not artists in their earliest education? I say that this unknown woman, if she is not a young girl, has never been a mother but is filled with the maternal instinct; she has loved this man to form him, to develop him. It needs a feminine element in you men of law to detect these shades of motive, which too often escape you. If I had been your deputy,” she said, looking straight at the procureur-general, “I should have found the guilty woman, if indeed there is any guilt about it. I agree with the Abbe Dutheil that these lovers meant to fly to America with the money of old Pingret. The theft led to the murder by the fatal logic which the punishment of death inspires. And so,” she added with an appealing look at Monsieur de Grandville, “I think it would be merciful in you to abandon the theory of premeditation, for in so doing you would save the man’s life. He is evidently a fine man in spite of his crime; he might, perhaps, repair that crime by a great repentance if you gave him time. The works of repentance ought to count for something in the judgment of the law. In these days is there nothing better for a human being to do than to give his life, or build, as in former times, a cathedral of Milan, to expiate his crimes?”
“Your ideas are noble, madame,” said Monsieur de Grandville, “but, premeditation apart, Tascheron would still be liable to the penalty of death on account of the other serious and proved circumstances attending the crime,—such as forcible entrance and burglary at night.”
“Then you think that he will certainly be found guilty?” she said, lowering her eyelids.