"What wouldst thou have, my daughter," he asked with dignity, "that thou dost disturb the holy services of the Church?"
There was a slight pause. Marcelline seemed to steady herself: then putting her hand on the coffin of Alphège Cherbuliez, she said in a high, monotonous voice which rang through the building and reached even the watchers on the green without, "I killed Doctor Alphège Cherbuliez with my own hands. No one helped me and no one saw me. You can turn Pierre Lambas and Gérard Grôl loose."
There was a sudden stir like the rushing of a mighty wind through the church, but the priest waved his hand and the people were still.
"What was your motive?" he asked without moving.
The woman had never turned her head, and now answered him in the same overstrained key: "He starved my mistress to death. I saw her slowly dying of hunger and thirst day after day, and I made up my mind to kill him as soon as I could get the chance. I had to wait and wait," she went on, her voice sinking a little, "till at last it was too late."
She stopped, suddenly stooped and kissed her mistress's coffin: then wheeling round and facing the congregation, who sat spellbound, she shook her clenched fist at them. "Ah!" she said, speaking in a terrible voice, "you knew, you must have known—friends and cousins and brothers, ay, daughters too—that bread—bread!—was what she wanted. Who heard her cry for food? Who heard her beg and pray and implore for one little sip of milk, one little bite of meat?" Her voice rose to a shriek as she went on, but such was the force of her passion that no effort was made to check her: "You, all of you—all heard, all saw, all knew, yet none had courage to act; and now, c'est moi! c'est moi!" striking her breast violently with both hands, "la pauvre esclave, qui l'ai vengée!"
She paused: there was a dead silence. Instantly a ring of men closed round her: she was swept from the church, so swiftly was she borne away, and the service proceeded.
The priest looked pale, and sent two or three messages to those without, but they were of no avail. Before he could leave the altar, which he did as hurriedly as possible, Marcelline was hanging from the limb of an oak tree within sight of the church, her last words being, "God will forgive me: I did right." But bitter were the tears Père Ramain shed when he found she had gone to her last account unshriven and unabsolved.
Annie Porter.