"You cowardly, barbarous miscreant, you will answer for it here and hereafter."
"Blassemare, my friend—my dear friend—in the name of God, don't denounce me. You would not; no, you could not. I have been a good friend to you. For the love of God, help me, Blassemare—save me. You shall have half my fortune; I'll stick at no terms; I'll make you, by —— the richest man in Paris. You shall have what you like—every thing, any thing—only help me in this accursed extremity."
For a long time, Blassemare met his abject and agonized entreaties with a stoical scorn; at last, however, he relented.
The body was removed that night; and it is well known to the readers of old French trials, how wonderfully Providence supplied by a chain of apparent accidents, an important witness in our friend Gabriel.
We left him buried in the hay of the stable-loft. We must pursue his adventure to its conclusion.
As soon as he had a little recovered the heat which was nearly extinguished, he got up, and finding an old piece of drugget, he wrapped it about him in the fashion of a cloak; and having looked in vain for any window opening upon the street, he climbed, by the aid of the joists, to an aperture in the half-rotten roof, and passing through it, crept like a cat along, until he reached the spout, down which, at the risk of his neck, he climbed. He was now safe in the public street. Picking up a sharp stone, he scratched some marks, such as he could easily recognize again, upon the gateway. He then knocked at a barber's shop, nearly opposite, where he saw a light, and asked the name of the street, and his route to the Hotel de Secqville.
The marquis had arrived before him; and his amazement at the strange attire of his retainer was changed to horror, when he learned the particulars of his adventure.
Not a moment was lost by De Secqville in applying to the police, and, with an officer and a party of archers, he proceeded at once to the Hotel St. Maurice—for such was the name of the nearly ruinous building we have described. There they arrested Monsieur Le Prun, who was just emerging from the gate as they arrived; as also Blassemare, whom they surprised in his room. No definite suspicion, beyond the conjectures of De Secqville, had as yet attached to either of these gentlemen; but some expressions which escaped Le Prun, upon his arrest, were of a character to excite the profoundest suspicions of his guilt.
Blassemare instantly tendered his evidence, and in the course of it was forced to make disclosures very little creditable to himself. The old woman, Gertrude Peltier, who resided in the house, and had attended upon Lucille, was also examined, and a servant named St. Jean, a sort of groom, who had been a long time in Le Prun's service, also deposed to some important facts. This evidence, collected and reduced to a narrative form, was to the following effect:—
It seemed that, about twenty-four years before, Le Prun had privately married an actress of the Théâtre ——, named Emilie Guadin. They had lived together—not very happily—by reason, as was supposed, of her violent temper. Her sister, Marie Guadin, resided with them. After about four years it began to be rumored that Monsieur Le Prun was about to be married to the widow of an immensely rich merchant of Bourdeaux. The strict privacy and isolation in which his wife and her sister were compelled by him to live, prevented the rumor from reaching them, and the circumstance of his existing marriage had been kept so strict a secret, that it was not suspected by any but the immediate parties to the ceremony.