common justice to have allowed her the
opportunity of speaking before the bread was
carried away.

It was now seven o'clock in the evening.
The next event was the arrival of another
officious visitor. The new friend in need
belonged to the legal profession—he was an
advocate named Friley. Monsieur Friley's
legal instincts led him straightway to a
conclusion which advanced the progress of events
seriously. Having heard the statement of
Madame Duparc and her daughter, he
decided that it was his duty to lodge an
information against Marie before the Procurator
of the King, at Caen.

The Procurator of the King is, by this
time, no stranger to the reader. He was the
same Monsieur Revel who had taken such
an amazingly strong interest in Marie's
fortunes, and who had strongly advised her to
try her luck at Caen. Here then, surely,
was a friend found at last for the forlorn
maid-of-all-work? We shall see how
Monsieur Revel acted after Friley's information
had been duly lodged.

The French law of the period, and, it may
be added, the commonest principles of
justice also, required the Procurator to perform
certain plain duties as soon as the accusation
against Marie had reached his ears. He was,
in the first place, bound to proceed immediately,
accompanied by his official colleague, to
the spot where the alleged crime of poisoning
was supposed to have taken place. Arrived
there, it was his business to ascertain for
himself the condition of the persons attacked
with illness; to hear their statements; to
examine the rooms, the kitchen utensils, and
the family medicine-chest, if there happened
to be one in the house; to receive any statement
the accused person might wish to make;
to take down her answers to his questions;
and, lastly, to keep anything found on the
servant (the bread-crumbs, for instance,
of which Surgeon Hébert had coolly taken
possession), or anything found about the
house, which it might be necessary to
produce in evidence, in a position of absolute
security, under the hand and seal of justice.

These were the plain duties which
Monsieur Revel, the Procurator, was officially
bound to fulfil. In the case of Marie, he not
only neglected to perform any one of them,
but actually sanctioned a scheme for entrapping
her into prison, by sending a commissary
of police to the house, in plain clothes, with
an order to place her in solitary confinement.
To what motive could this scandalous violation
of his duties and of justice be attributed?
The last we saw of Monsieur Revel, he was
so benevolently disposed towards Marie that
he condescended to advise her about her
prospects in life, and even went the length
of recommending her to seek for a situation
in the very town in which he lived himself.
And now, we find him so suddenly and
bitterly hostile towards the former object of
his patronage, that he actually lends the
assistance of his high official position to
sanction an accusation against her, into the
truth or falsehood of which he had not made
a single inquiry! Can it be that Monsieur
Revel's interest in Marie was, after all, not
of the purest possible kind, and that the
unfortunate girl proved too stubbornly
virtuous to be taught what the real end was
towards which the attentions of her over-
benevolent adviser privately pointed? There
is no evidence attaching to the case (as how
should there be?) to prove this. But is
there any other explanation of Monsieur
Revel's conduct, which at all tends to account
for the extraordinary inconsistency of it?

Having received his secret instructions,
the commissary of police—a man named
Bertot—proceeded to the house of Monsieur
and Madame Duparc, disguised in plain
clothes. His first proceeding was to order
Marie to produce the various plates, dishes,
and kitchen utensils which had been used at
the dinner of Tuesday, the seventh of August
(that being the day on which the poisoning
of the company was alleged to have taken
place). Marie produced a saucepan, an
earthen vessel, a stewpan, and several plates
piled on each other, in one of which there
were the remains of some soup. These
articles Bertot locked up in the kitchen
cupboard, and took away the key with him. He
ought to have taken the additional precaution
of placing a seal on the cupboard, so as
to prevent any tampering with the lock, or
any treachery with a duplicate key. But
this he neglected to do.

His next proceeding was to tell Marie that
the Procurator Revel wished to speak to her,
and to propose that she should accompany
him to the presence of that gentleman forthwith.
Not having the slightest suspicion of
any treachery, she willingly consented, and
left the house with the commissary. A friend
of the Duparcs, named Vassol, accompanied
them.

Once out of the house, Bertot led his
unsuspecting prisoner straight to the gaol. As soon
as she was inside the gates, he informed her
that she was arrested, and proceeded to search
her person in the presence of Vassol, the
gaoler of the prison, and a woman named
Dujardin. The first thing found on her was
a little linen bag, sewn to her petticoat, and
containing a species of religious charm,
in the shape of a morsel of the sacramental
wafer. Her pockets came next under review
(the pockets which surgeon Hébert had
previously searched). A little dust was
discovered at the bottom of them, which was
shaken out on paper, wrapped up along with
the linen bag, sealed in one packet, and taken
to the Procurator's office. Finally, the woman
Dujardin found in Marie's bosom a little
key, which she readily admitted to be the
key of her own cupboard.

The search over, one last act of cruelty and