Then they all went to the young man’s house
and he told them his history. The circus people
had carried him off. For three years he traveled
with them in various countries. Then the troupe
disbanded, and one day an old lady in a chateau had
paid to have him stay with her because she liked his
appearance. As he was intelligent, he was sent
to school, then to college, and the old lady having
no children, had left him all her money. He,
for his part, had tried to find his parents, but as
he could remember only the two names, “Papa
Pierre, Mamma Jeanne,” he had been unable to
do so. Now he was about to be married, and he
introduced his fiancee, who was very good and very
pretty.
When the two old people had told their story in their
turn he kissed them once more. They sat up very
late that night, not daring to retire lest the happiness
they had so long sought should escape them again while
they were asleep.
But misfortune had lost its hold on them and they
were happy for the rest of their lives.
The lawyer had presented a plea of insanity.
How could anyone explain this strange crime otherwise?
One morning, in the grass near Chatou, two bodies
had been found, a man and a woman, well known, rich,
no longer young and married since the preceding year,
the woman having been a widow for three years before.
They were not known to have enemies; they had not
been robbed. They seemed to have been thrown
from the roadside into the river, after having been
struck, one after the other, with a long iron spike.
The investigation revealed nothing. The boatmen,
who had been questioned, knew nothing. The matter
was about to be given up, when a young carpenter from
a neighboring village, Georges Louis, nicknamed “the
Bourgeois,” gave himself up.
To all questions he only answered this:
“I had known the man for two years, the woman
for six months. They often had me repair old
furniture for them, because I am a clever workman.”
And when he was asked:
“Why did you kill them?”
He would obstinately answer:
“I killed them because I wanted to kill them.”
They could get nothing more out of him.
This man was undoubtedly an illegitimate child, put
out to nurse and then abandoned. He had no other
name than Georges Louis, but as on growing up he became
particularly intelligent, with the good taste and native
refinement which his acquaintances did not have, he
was nicknamed “the Bourgeois,” and he
was never called otherwise. He had become remarkably
clever in the trade of a carpenter, which he had taken
up. He was also said to be a socialist fanatic,
a believer in communistic and nihilistic doctrines,
a great reader of bloodthirsty novels, an influential
political agitator and a clever orator in the public
meetings of workmen or of farmers.
