s death," said her mother, "and went
to that of Messrs. Philippart, who offered him higher wages-- But my
daughter is scarcely well enough for this exciting conversation," she
added, calling attention to Madame Graslin, whose face was as white as
her sheets.

After that evening Mere Sauviat gave up her own home, and came, in spite
of her sixty-six years, to stay with her daughter and nurse her through
her confinement. She never left the room; Madame Graslin's friends
found the old woman always at the bed's head busy with her eternal
knitting,--brooding over Veronique as she did when the girl had the
small-pox, answering questions for her and often refusing to admit
visitors. The maternal and filial love of mother and daughter was so
well known in Limoges that these actions of Madame Sauviat caused no
comment.

A few days later, when the viscount, thinking to amuse the invalid,
began to relate details which the whole town were eagerly demanding
about Jean-Francois Tascheron, Madame Sauviat again stopped him hastily,
declaring that he would give her daughter bad dreams. Veronique,
however, looking fixedly at Monsieur de Grandville, asked him to finish
what he was saying. Thus her friends, and she herself, were the first
to know the results of the preliminary inquiry, which would soon be
made public. The following is a brief epitome of the facts on which the
indictment found against the prisoner was based.

Jean-Francois Tascheron was the son of a small farmer burdened with a
family, who lived in the village of Montegnac.

Twenty years before this crime, which was famous throughout the
Limousin, the canton of Montegnac was known for its evil ways. The
saying was proverbial in Limoges that out of one hundred criminals in
the department fifty belonged to the arrondissement of Montegnac. Since
1816, however, two years after a priest named Bonnet was sent there as
rector, it had lost its bad reputation, and the inhabitants no longer
sent their heavy contingent to the assizes. This change was widely
attributed to the influence acquired by the rector, Monsieur Bonnet,
over a community which had lately been a hotbed for evil-minded persons
whose actions dishonored the whole region. The crime of Jean-Francois
Tascheron brought back upon Montegnac its former ill-savor.

By a curious trick of chance, the Tascherons were almost the only family
in this village community who had retained through its evil period the
old rigid mora