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Updated: May 3, 2025
Denise and Louis, whom Jean had taught to dive, were actually on the bank of the river at a spot named to them by Jean, but Louis Tascheron had already dived four times, bringing up each time a bundle containing twenty thousand francs' worth of gold. The first sum was wrapped in a foulard handkerchief knotted by the four corners.
On the contrary, Jean-Francois Tascheron had given the time which other workmen were in the habit of spending in wine-shops and debauchery to study and self-improvement. When the mistress of the humble lodging-house in which he lived was questioned she said she had never had a lodger whose moral conduct was as blameless. He was naturally amiable and gentle, and sometimes gay.
They had arranged among themselves that they should rise and stand in a group, thus preventing the words of the repentant woman from being heard in the farther rooms; but their tears and sobs would, in any case, have drowned her voice. At this moment and before all else in that audience, two persons presented, to an observer, a powerfully affecting sight. One was Denise Tascheron.
"Well, yes, I will listen to him; I will do all he asks of me." "You promise it?" said Denise. "The saving of your soul is what we seek. Besides, you would not have all Limoges and the village say that a Tascheron knows not how to die a noble death? And then, too, think that all you lose here you will regain in heaven, where pardoned souls will meet again."
The crime of Jean-Francois Tascheron brought back upon Montegnac its former ill-savor. By a curious trick of chance, the Tascherons were almost the only family in this village community who had retained through its evil period the old rigid morals and religious habits which are noticed by the observers of to-day to be rapidly disappearing throughout the country districts.
The absence of Tascheron during the night of the crime, and his refusal to say where he was, for the accused did not offer to set up an alibi; a fragment of his blouse, torn off by the servant-woman in the struggle, found close by on a tree to which the wind had carried it; his presence that evening near Pingret's house, which was noticed by passers and by persons living in the neighborhood, though it might not have been remembered unless for the crime; a false key made by Tascheron which fitted the door opening to the fields; this key was found carefully buried two feet below one of the miser's holes, where Monsieur des Vanneaulx, digging deep to make sure there was not another layer of treasure-pots, chanced to find it; the police, after many researches, found the different persons who had furnished Tascheron with the iron, loaned him the vice, and given him the file, with which the key was presumably made.
"Monsieur," said the Abbe de Grancour, approaching the bishop, "it is all useless; we shall certainly have the distress of seeing that unhappy Tascheron die an unbeliever. He vociferates the most horrible imprecations against religion; he insults that poor Abbe Pascal; he spits upon the crucifix; and means to die denying all, even hell."
Tascheron was maddened; I swear it." Here Veronique turned her eyes upon Monsieur de Grandville, and a sob was heard to issue from Denise Tascheron's breast. "He lost his mind when he saw what he thought his happiness destroyed by unforeseen circumstances. The unhappy man, misled by his love, went headlong from a delinquent act to crime from robbery to a double murder.
Lastly, the poor unmarried sister, imprisoned in the interests of justice, now released, a martyr to fraternal affection, Denise Tascheron, was listening to the priest's words with a look that was partly bewildered and partly incredulous. For her, her brother could not die.
I mean the unfortunate Jean-Francois Tascheron, who thenceforth attached himself to me as his benefactress. How did the affection I felt for him become a guilty one? I think myself excused from explaining this.
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