"Nearly four years. From the beginning of her engagement at the Porte-Saint-Martin, when she took the apartment in the Rue Lafitte. Her salary at the theatre justified her in taking such an apartment. Before that time she had been living with her mother on the other side of the Seine."
"Is it your opinion that Monsieur Georges was the murderer?"
"That is my fixed opinion."
This concluded the examination of Barbe Girot. The little girl's examination was not resumed until ten days later. She had been very ill in the mean time, and seemed altogether weak and broken down when she was brought before the Juge d'Instruction. She burst out crying in the midst of her evidence, and the grandmother had great difficulty in calming her.
"We had a nice dinner, and Monsieur de Maucroix was very kind, and gave me grapes and a big peach, and he promised to buy me a doll next day in the Passage Jouffroy. My aunt was sad, and Monsieur de Maucroix begged her to be gay, and he talked about taking her to Italy with him, just as he had talked in the train. And then we went out in a carriage and drove along a terrace, where there was a beautiful view over a river and a great green valley. My aunt seemed much gayer, and she and Monsieur de Maucroix were talking and laughing all the time; and afterwards, when we all got out of the carriage and walked in the forest, they both seemed very happy, and my aunt rested her head on Monsieur de Maucroix's shoulder as they walked along, and said it was like being in heaven to be in that moonlit forest with him; and then, just at that moment, a man rushed out from the darkness under the trees, like a wild beast out of a cave, and shot, and shot, and shot, again and again and again. And first Monsieur de Maucroix fell, and then my aunt, and she was all over blood. I could see it streaming over her light-blue gown, first one stream and then another. I can see it now. I am seeing it always. It wakes me out of my sleep. O, take it away; take away the dark forest; take away the blood!"
At this point, said the report, the child again became hysterical, and had to be carried away. After this she had an attack of brain-fever, and could not again be interrogated formally.
END OF VOL. I.
