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"'Tis an idle rumor," said M. de Meilhan, in a dry tone that forced his dreadful friend to select another topic of conversation. Oh, how curious I was to find out what Roger had written to M. de Meilhan! Roger had a confidant! He had told him about me! What could he have said? Oh, this dreadful letter! What would I not give to see it!
He had lodged 1772 francs with Mme Lacoste, and she had given him a bill on Castera. Whether he had given the money before or after getting the bill he could not be sure. He thought afterwards. He had forgotten the circumstances while in prison. Meilhan stuck pretty firmly to his story that it was to deceive his son that he had fabricated the deed of annuity.
"With this weapon," I said, "all the disadvantages are on the side of M. de Meilhan; the skilful fencing of his adversary is celebrated among amateurs. He is one of Pons's best scholars." "Have you brought a surgeon?" said the captain. "Yes, monsieur, we left Dr. Gillard in a house near by."
The evidence that Meilhan had given Lacoste the drink was all second-hand; that to the contrary was definite. For the most part the evidence with regard to , that Lacoste became very ill immediately on his return from the fair, was hearsay. The servants belonging to the Lacoste household all maintained that the vomiting did not seize the old man until the night of Wednesday-Thursday.
One day M. Senac de Meilhan found Madame de Pompadour's brother, M. de Marigny, about to burn a packet of papers. "It is the journal," he said, "of a femme de chambre of my sister, a good, kind woman." De Meilhan asked for the manuscript, which he later gave to Mr.
I did all this with the intention of making my son believe, when my infirmities obliged me to retire to his household, that my income came from a life annuity some one had given me; and to hide from him where I had put my capital I wanted to persuade M. Sabazan that the deed actually existed, so that he could bear witness to the fact to my son. Here, said the accusation, Meilhan was trying to make out that it was on the occasion of a letter from his son that he had spoken to the Mayor of the annuity.
The Orientals, he added, whom we call barbarians, are more modest than we; they shut up their wives; they never appear in public with them, they never let any one see the objects of their tenderness, and they introduce young men of twenty, not as their sons, but as the heirs of their names and fortunes. Recalling these remarkable sentiments of M. de Meilhan, I said to myself: he will never marry.
She admitted, incidentally, having begun to receive a young man some six weeks after her husband's death, but she had not known him before marriage. Meilhan had carried no letters between them. She had married Lacoste of her own free will. Lacoste had not asked any attentions from her that were not ordinarily sought by a husband, and her care of him had been spontaneous.
According to the accusation, the considerable amount of poison found in the body established that the arsenic had been administered on several occasions, on the first by Meilhan and on the others by Mme Lacoste. When Henri Lacoste had drawn his last breath his wife shed a few tears. But presently her grief gave place to other preoccupations.
Some days later still Meilhan told M. Sabazan that Mme Lacoste did not wish to use the form of document suggested by the Mayor, but had written one herself. Meilhan showed the Mayor the widow's document, and begged him to read it to see if it was in proper form. Sabazan read the document. It created an annuity of 400 francs, payable yearly in the month of August.
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