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It is an inconsiderable town a few miles from Vic-Fezensac, a town not much bigger than itself and some twenty kilometres from Auch, which is the capital of the department of Gers. You may take it that Riguepeu lies in the heart of the Armagnac district.
He couldn't help it if the story sounded thin. It was the fact. How had he contrived to save, as he said, 3000 francs? His yearly income during his six years at Riguepeu had been only 500 francs. The court had reason to be surprised. ``Ah! You're surprised! exclaimed Meilhan, rather put out. But at Breuzeville, where he was before Riguepeu, he had bed and board free.
In Riguepeu he had nothing off the spit for days on end. He spent only 130 francs a year, he said, giving details. And then he did a little trade in corn. He had destroyed the annuity deed only because it was worthless. As for what he had said to the Mayor about drawing his first payment of the pension, he had done it because he was a bit conscience-stricken over fabricating the deed.
The roads to Tarbes, Toulouse, and Vic-Fezensac were patrolled by brigades of gendarmes day and night, but there was no sign of the fugitive. It was rumoured that she had got away to Spain, that she was cached in a barrel at Riguepeu, that she was in the fields disguised as a shepherd, that she had taken the veil. In the meantime the process against her went forward.
From her prison cell Marie Lafarge watched the progress of the trial in Gascony. And when its result was published one may be sure she shed a tear or two. But to Riguepeu . . . You will not find it on anything but the biggest-scale maps.
At the same time she sent the bailiff Labadie to Riguepeu, to find out the names of those who were traducing her, and to say that she intended to prosecute her calumniators with the utmost rigour of the law. This, said the accusation, was nothing but a move to frighten the witnesses against her into silence. Instead of making good her threats the Widow Lacoste disappeared.
Twenty years separate the cases of these two women, the length of France lies between the scenes in which they are placed: Mme Boursier, Paris, 1823; Mme Lacoste, Riguepeu, a small town in Gascony, 1844. I tie their cases together for reasons which cannot be apparent until both their stories are told and which may not be so apparent even then.
About two years after the marriage, on the 16th of May, 1843, to be exact, after a trip with his wife to the fair at Riguepeu, old Lacoste was taken suddenly ill, ultimately becoming violently sick. Eight days later he died.
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