"Now tell me all you can about your journey to Saint-Germain."
"We went in the train, in a beautiful carriage with soft cushions. I looked out of the window all the time. My aunt and Monsieur de Maucroix sat by the other window talking."
"Did you hear what they said?"
"Not much. I was not listening. It was so nice to see the country, and the trees rushing by. I heard Monsieur de Maucroix ask my aunt to go away with him—he begged her to go—to Italy, I think he said. Is there a place called Italy?"
"Yes. And how did your aunt answer?"
"She said she could not go. She was bound to Georges. Georges would kill her if she left him. Monsieur de Maucroix laughed, and said that people do not do such things nowadays. He laughed—and soon afterwards my aunt and he were both dead. I saw the blood—streams of blood."
At this point, said the report, the girl Lemarque became hysterical, and the rest of her evidence had to be postponed for another day. In the mean time the grandmother, and Barbe Girot, Marie Prévol's servant, were interrogated.
Madame Lemarque stated that her daughter was an actress at the Porte-Saint-Martin. She was very beautiful, and was more renowned for her grace and beauty than for her acting. She danced and sang and acted in fairy scenes. She was only three-and-twenty years of age at the time of her death.
Upon being asked by the judge whether her daughter led a strictly moral life, Madame Lemarque replied that her conduct was purity itself as compared with that of many ladies who acted in fairy pieces.
"But there was some one, perhaps," insinuated the judge, "there is always some one. So beautiful a woman must have had many admirers. I have her photograph here. It is an exquisite face, a beauty quite out of the common, refined, spiritual. Surely among her many admirers there must have been one whom she favoured above all the rest?"