mining magistrate. On February 2, nearly a month after the
crime, the magistrate, accompanied by Mace, then a commissary of police,
afterwards head of the Detective Department, paid a visit to the Rue de
Boulogne. Their reception was not cordial. It was only after they had
made known their official character that they got audience of the widow.
She entered the room, carrying in her hand a surgical spray, with which
she played nervously while the men of the law asked to see her charge.
She replied that it was impossible. Mace placed himself in front of the
door by which she had entered, and told her that her attitude was not
seemly. "Leave that spray alone," he said; "it might shoot over us, and
then perhaps we should be sprinkled as M. de Saint Pierre was." From
that moment, writes Mace, issue was joined between the widow and
himself.

The magistrate insisted on seeing the patient. He sat by his bedside.
M. de Saint Pierre told him that, having no enemies, he was sure he had
been the victim of some mistake, and that, as he claimed no damages
for his injuries, he did not wish his misfortune to be made public.
He wanted to be left alone with his brave and devoted nurse, and to be
spared the nervous excitement of a meeting with his family. He intended,
he added, to leave Paris shortly for change of scene and air. The widow
cut short the interview on the ground that her patient was tired.

It was inhuman, she said, to make him suffer so. The magistrate, before
leaving, asked her whither she intended taking her patient. She replied,
"To Italy." That, said the magistrate, would be impossible until his
inquiry was closed. In the meantime she might take him to any place
within the Department of the Seine; but she must be prepared to be under
the surveillance of M. Mace, who would have the right to enter her
house whenever he should think it expedient. With this disconcerting
intelligence the men of the law took leave of the widow.

She was no longer to be left in undisturbed possession of her prize.
Her movements were watched by two detectives. She was seen to go to
the bachelor lodgings of Georges and take away a portable desk, which
contained money and correspondence. More mysterious, however, was a
visit she paid to the Charonne Cemetery, where she had an interview with
an unknown, who was dressed in the clothes of a workman. She left the
cemetery alone, and the detectives lost track of her companion. This
meeting took pla