touching the death by poison of Monsieur de
Beaulieu. The first witness called was Monsieur
Duparc.

This gentleman, it will be remembered,
was away from home, on Monday, the sixth,
when Monsieur de Beaulieu died, and only
returned, at the summons of his eldest son,
at half-past eleven on the forenoon of the
seventh. He had nothing to depose connected
with the death of his father-in-law or with
the events which might have taken place in
the house on the night of the sixth and the
morning of the seventh. On the other hand,
he had a great deal to say about the state of
his own stomach after the dinner of the seventh
— a species of information not calculated to
throw much light on the subject of inquiry,
which was the poisoning of Monsieur de
Beaulieu.

The old lady, Madame de Beaulieu, was
next examined. She could give no evidence
of the slightest importance touching the
matter in hand; but, like Monsieur Duparc,
she had something to say on the topic of the
poisoned dinner.

Madame Duparc followed on the list of
witnesses. The report of her examination—
so thoroughly had she recovered from the
effects of the dinner of the seventh— ran to a
prodigious length. Five-sixths of it were
occupied with her own sensations and suspicions,
and the sensations and suspicions of
her relatives and friends, after they had risen
from table. As to the point at issue, the
point which affected the liberty, and perhaps
the life, of her unfortunate servant, she had
so little to say that her testimony may be
repeated here in her own words:

"The witness (Madame Duparc) deposed,
that after Marie had helped Monsieur de
Beaulieu to get up, she (Marie) hastened out
for the milk, and, on her return with it,
prepared the hasty-pudding, took it herself
off the fire, and herself poured it out into the
plate— then left the kitchen to accompany
Madame de Beaulieu to mass. Four or five
minutes after Monsieur de Beaulieu had
eaten the hasty-pudding, he was seized with
violent illness."

Short as it is, this statement contains
several distinct suppressions of the truth.
First, Madame Duparc is wrong in stating
that Marie fetched the milk, for it was the
milk woman who brought it to the house.
Secondly, Madame Duparc conceals the fact
that she handed the flour to the servant to
make the hasty-pudding. Thirdly, Madame
Duparc does not mention, that she held the
plate for the pudding to be poured into, and
took it to her father. Fourthly, and most
important of all, Madame Duparc altogether
omits to state, that she sprinkled salt, with
her own hands, over the hasty-pudding,
although she had expressly informed her
servant, a day or two before, that salt was
never to be mixed with it. At a subsequent
stage of the proceedings, she was charged
with having salted the hasty-pudding herself,
and she could not, and did not, deny it.

The examination of Madame Duparc ended
the business on the day of the eighth. The
next morning, the Lieutenant-Criminel, as
politely attentive as before, returned to
resume his inquiry at the private residence
of Monsieur Duparc,

The first witness examined on the second
day was Mademoiselle Duparc. She carefully
followed her mother's lead saying as little
as possible about the preparation of the
hasty-pudding on the morning of Monday,
and as much as possible about the pain
suffered by everybody after the dinner of
Tuesday. Madame Beauguillot, the next
witness, added her testimony, as to the state
of her own digestive organs, after partaking
of the same meal— speaking at such
prodigious length that the poison would
appear, in her case, to have produced its
principal effect (and that of a stimulating
kind) on her tongue. Her son, Monsieur de
Beauguillot, was next examined, quite
uselessly in relation to the death by poison
which was the object of inquiry. The last
witness was Madame Duparc's younger son
— the same who had complained of feeling
a gritty substance between his teeth at
dinner. In one important respect, his evidence
flatly contradicted his mother's. Madame
Duparc had adroitly connected Monsieur de
Beaulieu's illness with the hasty-pudding by
describing the old man as having been taken
ill four or five minutes after eating it.
Young Duparc, on the contrary, declared
that his grandfather first felt ill at nine
o'clock— exactly two hours after he had
partaken of his morning meal.

With the evidence of this last witness, the.
examinations at the private residence of
Monsieur Duparc ended. Thus far, out of
the seven persons, all related to each other,
who had been called as witnesses, three
(Monsieur Duparc himself, Madame Beauguillot,
and her son) had not been in the
house on the day when Monsieur de Beaulieu
died. Of the other four, who had been
present (Madame de Beaulieu, Madame Duparc,
her son and her daughter), not one
deposed to a single fact tending to fix on
Marie any reasonable suspicion of having
administered poison to Monsieur de Beaulieu.

The remaining witnesses, called before the
Lieuteuant-Crimmel, were twenty-nine in
number. Not one of them had been in
the house on the Monday which was the
day of the old man's death. Twenty-six
of them had nothing to offer but hearsay
evidence on the subject of the events which.
had taken place at, and after, the dinner
of Tuesday. The testimony of the remaining
three, namely, Lawyer Friley, who had
lodged the information against Marie;
Surgeon Hébert, who had searched her
pockets in the house; and Commissary Bertot,
who had searched her for the second