Mademoiselle Source was lying at the bottom on the
grass, her throat cut with a knife.
An hour later, the gendarmes, the examining magistrate,
and other authorities made an inquiry as to the cause
of death.
The two female relatives, called as witnesses, told
all about the old maid’s fears and her last
plans.
The orphan was arrested. After the death of the
woman who had adopted him, he wept from morning till
night, plunged, at least to all appearance, in the
most violent grief.
He proved that he had spent the evening up to eleven
o’clock in a cafe. Ten persons had seen
him, having remained there till his departure.
The driver of the diligence stated that he had set
down the murdered woman on the road between half-past
nine and ten o’clock.
The accused was acquitted. A will, drawn up a
long time before, which had been left in the hands
of a notary in Rennes, made him sole heir. So
he inherited everything.
For a long time, the people of the country boycotted
him, as they still suspected him. His house,
that of the dead woman, was looked upon as accursed.
People avoided him in the street.
But he showed himself so good-natured, so open, so
familiar, that gradually these horrible doubts were
forgotten. He was generous, obliging, ready to
talk to the humblest about anything, as long as they
cared to talk to him.
The notary, Maitre Rameau, was one of the first to
take his part, attracted by his smiling loquacity.
He said at a dinner, at the tax collector’s
house:
“A man who speaks with such facility and who
is always in good humor could not have such a crime
on his conscience.”
Touched by his argument, the others who were present
reflected, and they recalled to mind the long conversations
with this man who would almost compel them to stop
at the road corners to listen to his ideas, who insisted
on their going into his house when they were passing
by his garden, who could crack a joke better than
the lieutenant of the gendarmes himself, and who possessed
such contagious gaiety that, in spite of the repugnance
with which he inspired them, they could not keep from
always laughing in his company.
All doors were opened to him after a time.
He is to-day the mayor of his township.
He had seen better days, despite his present misery
and infirmities.
At the age of fifteen both his legs had been crushed
by a carriage on the Varville highway. From that
time forth he begged, dragging himself along the roads
and through the farmyards, supported by crutches which
forced his shoulders up to his ears. His head
looked as if it were squeezed in between two mountains.
A foundling, picked up out of a ditch by the priest
of Les Billettes on the eve of All Saints’ Day
and baptized, for that reason, Nicholas Toussaint,
reared by charity, utterly without education, crippled
in consequence of having drunk several glasses of
brandy given him by the baker (such a funny story!)
and a vagabond all his life afterward—the
only thing he knew how to do was to hold out his hand
for alms.
