He stopped abruptly, seeking, no doubt, some connection between the pretty Parisian and the murderers; then resumed: 

“Now that I know the Tremorels as if I had lived with them intimately, let us proceed to the actual facts.”

The brilliant eye of M. Plantat immediately grew dim; he opened his lips as if to speak; but kept his peace.  The doctor alone, who had not ceased to study the old justice of the peace, remarked the sudden change of his features.

“It only remains,” said M. Domini, “to know how the new couple lived.”

M. Courtois thought it due to his dignity to anticipate M. Plantat.

“You ask how the new couple lived,” said he hastily; “they lived in perfect concord; nobody knows better about it than I, who was most intimate with them.  The memory of poor Sauvresy was a bond of happiness between them; if they liked me so well, it was because I often talked of him.  Never a cloud, never a cross word.  Hector—­ I called him so, familiarly, this poor, dear count—­gave his wife the tender attentions of a lover; those delicate cares, which I fear most married people soon dispense with.”

“And the countess?” asked M. Plantat, in a tone too marked not to be ironical.

“Bertha?” replied the worthy mayor—­“she permitted me to call her thus, paternally—­I have cited her many and many a time as an example and model, to Madame Courtois.  She was worthy of Hector and of Sauvresy, the two most worthy men I have ever met!”

Then, perceiving that his enthusiasm somewhat surprised his hearers, he added, more softly: 

“I have my reasons for expressing myself thus; and I do not hesitate to do so before men whose profession and character will justify my discretion.  Sauvresy, when living, did me a great service—­when I was forced to take the mayoralty.  As for Hector, I knew well that he had departed—­from the dissipations of his youth, and thought I discerned that he was not indifferent to my eldest daughter, Laurence; and I dreamed of a marriage all the more proper, as, if the Count Hector had a great name, I would give to my daughter a dowry large enough to gild any escutcheon.  Only events modified my projects.”

The mayor would have gone on singing the praises of the Tremorels, and his own family, if the judge of instruction had not interposed.

“Here I am fixed,” he commenced, “now, it seems to me—­”

He was interrupted by a loud noise in the vestibule.  It seemed like a struggle, and cries and shouts reached the drawing-room.  Everybody rose.

“I know what it is,” said the mayor, “only too well.  They have just found the body of the Count de Tremorel.”

IV

The mayor was mistaken.  The drawing-room door opened suddenly, and a man of slender form, who was struggling furiously, and with an energy which would not have been suspected, appeared, held on one side by a gendarme, and on the other by a domestic.