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With regard to Lacoste's attempts to seduce the servants, she declared this was a vague affair, and she had found the first girl in question a place elsewhere. Her letter to the Procureur du Roi demanding an exhumation and justice against her slanderers was read.

Meilhan showed Castera the original note, which was to be renewed in Meilhan's favour. The accusation dwelt on the different versions regarding his possession of the note given by Meilhan to the Mayor and to Castera. Meilhan was demonstrably lying to conceal Mme Lacoste's liberality.

He noticed that it showed some mistakes, and that the signature of the Widow Lacoste began with the word ``Euphemie. In the month of August Meilhan was met coming out of Mme Lacoste's by the Mayor. Jingling money in his pocket, the schoolmaster told the Mayor he had just drawn the first payment of his annuity. Later Meilhan bragged to the cure of Basais that he was made for life.

Evidence from a business-man in Tarbes showed that Mme Lacoste's handling of her fortune was careful to a degree, her expenditure being well within her income. This witness also proved that the Fourcades' evidence of Euphemie's misbehaviour could have been dictated from spite. Fourcade had been found out in what looked like a swindle over money which he owed to the Lacoste estate.

She did not know that her husband was complaining outside about her. She denied all knowledge of the arsenic found in Lacoste's body, but suggested that it might have come from one or other of the medicines he took. Questioned with regard to her intimacy with Meilhan, she declared that she knew nothing of his morals.

Euphemie Verges, said the accusation, thus thought herself exposed daily, by the infidelity of her husband, to the loss of all her hopes. Also, talking to a Mme Bordes about the two servants some days after Lacoste's death, she said, ``I had a bad time with those two girls! If my husband had lived longer I might have had nothing, because he wanted a child that he could leave everything to.

He declared his faith in a local vet. On , the bulk of the evidence against Lacoste's having the suggested afflictions came simply from witnesses who had not heard of them. There was, on the contrary, quite a number of witnesses to declare that Lacoste did suffer from a skin disease, and that he was in the habit of using quack remedies, the stronger the better.

The evidence regarding the seclusion of Lacoste by his wife was contradictory, but the most direct of it maintained that it was the old man himself, if anyone, who wanted to be left alone. On this point arises the question of the delay in calling the doctor. Witness after witness testified to Lacoste's hatred of the medical faculty and to his preference for dosing himself.

It was a long document, but something lacking in weight of proof proof of the actual murder, that is, if not of circumstance. The process in a French criminal court was and still is somewhat long-winded. The Procureur du Roi had to go over the accusation in detail, making the most of Mme Lacoste's intimacy with the ill-reputed old fellow.

Two vessels were exhibited, on which there glittered blobs of some metallic substance. This substance, the experts deposed, was arsenic obtained by the Marsh technique from the entrails and the muscular tissue from Lacoste's body. They could be sure that the substances used as reagents in the experiments were pure, and that the earth about the body was free from arsenic.