time she made use of
her admirer. On Sundays he helped her in her apartment, carried coals,
bottled wine, scrubbed the floors, and made himself generally useful. He
was supposed by those about the house to be her brother. Occasionally,
in the absence of a maid, the widow allowed him to attend on her
personally, even to assist her in her toilette and perform for her such
offices as one woman would perform for another. The man soon came to be
madly in love with the woman; his passion, excited but not gratified,
enslaved and consumed him. To some of his fellow-workmen who saw him
moody and preoccupied, he confessed that he ardently desired to marry a
friend of his childhood, not a working woman but a lady.

Such was the situation and state of mind of Nathalis Gaudry when, in
November, 1876, he received a letter from the widow, in which she wrote,
"Come at once. I want you on a matter of business. Tell your employer
it is a family affair; I will make up your wages." In obedience to this
message Gaudry was absent from the distillery from the 17th to the 23rd
of November.

The "matter of business" about which the widow wished to consult with
Gaudry turned out to be a scheme of revenge. She told him that she had
been basely defrauded by a man to whom she had entrusted money. She
desired to be revenged on him, and could think of no better way than to
strike at his dearest affections by seriously injuring his son. This she
proposed to do with the help of a knuckle-duster, which she produced and
gave to Gaudry. Armed with this formidable weapon, Gaudry was to strike
her enemy's son so forcibly in the pit of the stomach as to disable him
for life. The widow offered to point out to Gaudry the young man whom he
was to attack. She took him outside the young man's club and showed him
his victim. He was Georges de Saint Pierre.

The good fortune of her friend, the ballet-dancer, had proved a
veritable toxin in the intellectual system of the Widow Gras. The poison
of envy, disappointment, suspicion, apprehension had entered into her
soul. Of what use to her was a lover, however generous and faithful,
who was free to take her up and lay her aside at will? But such was her
situation relative to Georges de Saint Pierre. She remembered that the
wounded pigeon, as long as it was dependent on her kind offices, had
been compelled to stay by her side; recovered, it had flown away. Only a
pigeon, maimed beyond hope of recovery, could she be su