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Updated: May 5, 2025
The des Vanneaulx then had recourse to the lawyer who had defended Tascheron, and to him they offered ten per cent of whatever sum he could recover. This lawyer was the only person before whom Tascheron was not violent. The heirs authorized him to offer the prisoner an additional ten per cent to be paid to his family.
In spite of all these inducements and his own eloquence, the lawyer could obtain nothing whatever from his client. The des Vanneaulx were furious; they anathematized the unhappy man. "What good will our money do him in the place he is going to?" said her husband. "Murder can be conceived of, but useless theft is inconceivable. What days we live in, to be sure!
Madame des Vanneaulx, however, wanted to keep her uncle, after the manner of the managers of the Italian Opera, who entreat their popular tenor to wrap up his throat, and give him their cloak if he happens to have forgotten his own. She had sent old Pingret a fine English mastiff, which Jeanne Malassis, the servant-woman brought back the next day saying:
While the procureur-du-roi, the commissary of police, and the examining magistrate were gathering all particulars for the basis of their action, the luckless des Vanneaulx picked up the broken pots and calculated from their capacity the sum lost.
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.
But this struggle of spiritual fatherhood against the hurricane of unchained passions, overcame the poor abbe completely. "The man has had his paradise here below," said the old man, in his gentle voice. Little Madame des Vanneaulx consulted her friends as to whether she ought to try a visit herself to the criminal. Monsieur des Vanneaulx talked of offering terms.
"What do you expect her to think?" said Monsieur de Grandville. "Her child was born, as she predicted to me, on the morning of the execution; she has not seen any one since then, for she is dangerously ill." A scene took place in another salon in Limoges which was almost comical. The friends of the des Vanneaulx came to congratulate them on the recovery of their property.
The niece of this old man, and his sole heiress, married to a gentleman of small means living in Limoges, a Madame des Vanneaulx, had again and again urged her uncle to hire a man to protect the house, pointing out to him that he would thus obtain the profits of certain uncultivated ground where he now grew nothing but clover. But the old man steadily refused.
The des Vanneaulx had promised a reward to the police, and the police kept constant watch on the obstinate silence of the prisoner. When the man on duty looked through a loophole made for the purpose he saw the convict always in the same position, bound in the straight-jacket, his head secured by a leather thong ever since he had attempted to tear the stuff of the jacket with his teeth.
"Yes, but they ought to have pardoned that poor man," said Madame des Vanneaulx. "Love, and not greed, made him steal the money; he was neither vicious nor wicked." "He was full of consideration for us," said Monsieur des Vanneaulx; "and if I knew where his family had gone I would do something for them. They are very worthy people, those Tascherons."
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