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"What is his name?" asked Veronique, in a weak voice. "Jean-Francois Tascheron." "Unhappy man!" she answered. "Yes, I have often seen him; my poor father recommended him to my care as some one to be looked after." "He left the factory before Sauviat's death," said her mother, "and went to that of Messrs.
These old people, who had long resigned their authority to their son, the father of the criminal, were, like kings on their abdication, reduced to the passive role of subjects and children. Tascheron, the father, was standing up; he listened to the pastor, and replied to him in a low voice and by monosyllables.
A muffled cry was heard, as though some one were dying. Two persons, Gerard and Roubaud, received and carried away in their arms, Denise Tascheron, unconscious. That sight seemed for an instant to quench the fire in Veronique's eyes; she was evidently uneasy; but soon her self-control and serenity of martyrdom resumed their sway.
"Tascheron has no lack of patience; he had time to make sufficient means to support her while awaiting the time when all girls are at liberty to marry against the wishes of their parents; he need not have committed a crime to obtain her."
"Why didn't he marry her?" "How could he? They would certainly have arrested him. As it was, when La Curieux heard he was sentenced to the galleys the poor girl left this part of the country." "Was she a pretty girl?" "Oh!" said Maurice, "my mother says she was very like another girl who has also left Montegnac for something the same reason, Denise Tascheron."
A few days later, when the viscount, thinking to amuse the invalid, began to relate details which the whole town were eagerly demanding about Jean-Francois Tascheron, Madame Sauviat again stopped him hastily, declaring that he would give her daughter bad dreams. Veronique, however, looking fixedly at Monsieur de Grandville, asked him to finish what he was saying.
"There is not a household in which they are not talked over," said the Abbe de Grancour. "The state in which our good Abbe Pascal was put by his last efforts is the present topic of conversation throughout the town." "When is Tascheron to be executed?" asked the bishop. "To-morrow, which is market-day;" replied Monsieur de Grancour.
The police and the examining justice, finding themselves balked in the above directions, attributed the murder to a passion for gambling; but after the most searching inquiries it was proved that Tascheron never played cards.
Prevented by that controlling power from doing violence, Tascheron gave vent to his despair by convulsive jerks which horrified his guardians, and by words and looks which the middle-ages would have attributed to demoniacal possession. He was so young that many women thought pitifully of a life so full of passion about to be cut off forever.
To whatever distance the gold had been carried, Tascheron could not possibly, under any apparent hypothesis, have transported it alone. The care with which some of the footsteps were effaced, while others, to which Tascheron's shoes fitted, remained, certainly pointed to some mysterious assistant.
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