y horrible inward anguish and condemned to
absolute silence within her home. Who was this Medea whom the public
well-nigh admired,--the woman with that impenetrable brow, that white
breast covering a heart of steel? Perhaps she was the sister or the
cousin or the daughter or the wife of this one or of that one among
them! Alarm seemed to creep into the bosom of families. As Napoleon
finely said, it is especially in the domain of the imagination that the
power of the Unknown is immeasurable.

As for the hundred thousand francs stolen from Monsieur and Madame des
Vanneaulx no efforts of the police could find them; and the obstinate
silence of the criminal gave no clue. Monsieur de Grandville tried the
common means of holding out hopes of commutation of the sentence in case
of confession; but when he went to see the prisoner and suggest it the
latter received him with such furious cries and epileptic contortions,
such rage at being powerless to take him by the throat, that he could do
nothing.

The law could only look to the influence of the Church at the last
moment. The des Vanneaulx had frequently consulted with the Abbe Pascal,
chaplain of the prison. This priest was not without the faculty of
making prisoners listen to him, and he religiously braved Tascheron's
violence, trying to get in a few words amid the storms of that powerful
nature in convulsion. But this struggle of spiritual fatherhood against
the hurricane of unchained passions, overcame the poor abbe completely.

"The man has had his paradise here below," said the old man, in his
gentle voice.

Little Madame des Vanneaulx consulted her friends as to whether she
ought to try a visit herself to the criminal. Monsieur des Vanneaulx
talked of offering terms. In his anxiety to recover the money he
actually went to Monsieur de Grandville and asked for the pardon of his
uncle's murderer if the latter would make restitution of the hundred
thousand francs. The _procureur-general_ replied that the majesty of the
crown did not stoop to such compromises.

The des Vanneaulx then had recourse to the lawyer who had defended
Tascheron, and to him they offered ten per cent of whatever sum he could
recover. This lawyer was the only person before whom Tascheron was not
violent. The heirs authorized him to offer the prisoner an additional
ten per cent to be paid to his family. In spite of all these inducements
and his own eloquence, the lawyer could obtain nothing whateve