The Widow Lerouge | Page 3

she had lived on the coast, for ships and the sea
recurred incessantly in her conversation.
She did not like speaking of her husband who had, she said, perished in
a shipwreck. But she had never given the slightest detail. On one
particular occasion she had remarked, in presence of the milk-woman
and three other persons, "No woman was ever more miserable than I
during my married life." And at another she had said, "All new, all fine!
A new broom sweeps clean. My defunct husband only loved me for a
year!"
Widow Lerouge passed for rich, or at the least for being very well off
and she was not a miser. She had lent a woman at La Malmaison sixty
francs with which to pay her rent, and would not let her return them. At

another time she had advanced two hundred francs to a fisherman of
Port-Marly. She was fond of good living, spent a good deal on her food,
and bought wine by the half cask. She took pleasure in treating her
acquaintances, and her dinners were excellent. If complimented on her
easy circumstances, she made no very strong denial. She had frequently
been heard to say, "I have nothing in the funds, but I have everything I
want. If I wished for more, I could have it."
Beyond this, the slightest allusion to her past life, her country, or her
family had never escaped her. She was very talkative, but all she would
say would be to the detriment of her neighbours. She was supposed,
however, to have seen the world, and to know a great deal. She was
very distrustful and barricaded herself in her cottage as in a fortress.
She never went out in the evening, and it was well known that she got
tipsy regularly at her dinner and went to bed very soon afterwards.
Rarely had strangers been seen to visit her; four or five times a lady
accompanied by a young man had called, and upon one occasion two
gentlemen, one young, the other old and decorated, had come in a
magnificent carriage.
In conclusion, the deceased was held in but little esteem by her
neighbours. Her remarks were often most offensive and odious in the
mouth of a woman of her age. She had been heard to give a young girl
the most detestable counsels. A pork butcher, belonging to Bougival,
embarrassed in his business, and tempted by her supposed wealth, had
at one time paid her his addresses. She, however, repelled his advances,
declaring that to be married once was enough for her. On several
occasions men had been seen in her house; first of all, a young one,
who had the appearance of a clerk of the railway company; then
another, a tall, elderly man, very sunburnt, who was dressed in a blouse,
and looked very villainous. These men were reported to be her lovers.
Whilst questioning the witnesses, the commissary wrote down their
depositions in a more condensed form, and he had got so far, when the
investigating magistrate arrived, attended by the chief of the detective
police, and one of his subordinates.
M. Daburon was a man thirty-eight years of age, and of prepossessing

appearance; sympathetic notwithstanding his coldness; wearing upon
his countenance a sweet, and rather sad expression. This settled
melancholy had remained with him ever since his recovery, two years
before, from a dreadful malady, which had well-nigh proved fatal.
Investigating magistrate since 1859, he had rapidly acquired the most
brilliant reputation. Laborious, patient, and acute, he knew with
singular skill how to disentangle the skein of the most complicated
affair, and from the midst of a thousand threads lay hold to the right
one. None better than he, armed with an implacable logic, could solve
those terrible problems in which X--in algebra, the unknown
quantity--represents the criminal. Clever in deducing the unknown
from the known, he excelled in collecting facts, and in uniting in a
bundle of overwhelming proofs circumstances the most trifling, and in
appearance the most insignificant.
Although possessed of qualifications for his office so numerous and
valuable, he was tremblingly distrustful of his own abilities and
exercised his terrible functions with diffidence and hesitation. He
wanted audacity to risk those sudden surprises so often resorted to by
his colleagues in the pursuit of truth.
Thus it was repugnant to his feelings to deceive even an accused person,
or to lay snares for him; in fact the mere idea of the possibility of a
judicial error terrified him. They said of him in the courts, "He is a
trembler." What he sought was not conviction, nor the most probable
presumptions, but the most absolute certainty. No rest for him until the
day when the accused was forced to bow before the evidence; so