A poor widow of Nanterre, whose dwelling stood apart from the township, which is situated in the midst of the infertile plain lying between Mount-Valerian, Saint-Germain, the hills of Sartrouville, and Argenteuil, had been murdered and robbed a few days after coming into her share of an unexpected inheritance.  This windfall amounted to three thousand francs, a dozen silver spoons and forks, a gold watch and chain and some linen.  Instead of depositing the three thousand francs in Paris, as she was advised by the notary of the wine-merchant who had left it her, the old woman insisted on keeping it by her.  In the first place, she had never seen so much money of her own, and then she distrusted everybody in every kind of affairs, as most common and country folk do.  After long discussion with a wine-merchant of Nanterre, a relation of her own and of the wine-merchant who had left her the money, the widow decided on buying an annuity, on selling her house at Nanterre, and living in the town of Saint-Germain.

The house she was living in, with a good-sized garden enclosed by a slight wooden fence, was the poor sort of dwelling usually built by small landowners in the neighborhood of Paris.  It had been hastily constructed, with no architectural design, of cement and rubble, the materials commonly used near Paris, where, as at Nanterre, they are extremely abundant, the ground being everywhere broken by quarries open to the sky.  This is the ordinary hut of the civilized savage.  The house consisted of a ground floor and one floor above, with garrets in the roof.

The quarryman, her deceased husband, and the builder of this dwelling, had put strong iron bars to all the windows; the front door was remarkably thick.  The man knew that he was alone there in the open country—­and what a country!  His customers were the principal master-masons in Paris, so the more important materials for his house, which stood within five hundred yards of his quarry, had been brought out in his own carts returning empty.  He could choose such as suited him where houses were pulled down, and got them very cheap.  Thus the window frames, the iron-work, the doors, shutters, and wooden fittings were all derived from sanctioned pilfering, presents from his customers, and good ones, carefully chosen.  Of two window-frames, he could take the better.

The house, entered from a large stable-yard, was screened from the road by a wall; the gate was of strong iron-railing.  Watch-dogs were kept in the stables, and a little dog indoors at night.  There was a garden of more than two acres behind.

His widow, without children, lived here with only a woman servant.  The sale of the quarry had paid off the owner’s debts; he had been dead about two years.  This isolated house was the widow’s sole possession, and she kept fowls and cows, selling the eggs and milk at Nanterre.  Having no stableboy or carter or quarryman—­her husband had made them do every kind of work—­she no longer kept up the garden; she only gathered the few greens and roots that the stony ground allowed to grow self-sown.