This time the good woman consented, so truthful did the girl’s accents seem to be.  Constant visits to the vilest dens, where crime sprouted from the dunghill of poverty, had made Madame Angelin brave.  She was obliged to close her umbrella when she glided through the breach in the fence in the wake of the girl, who, slim and supple like a cat, glided on in front, bareheaded, in her ragged shawl.

“Give me your hand, madame,” said she.  “Take care, for there are some trenches. . . .  It’s over yonder at the end.  Can you hear how he’s moaning, poor brother? . . .  Ah! here we are!”

Then came swift and overwhelming savagery.  The three bandits, Alexandre, Richard, and Alfred, who had been crouching low, sprang forward and threw themselves upon Madame Angelin with such hungry, wolfish violence that she was thrown to the ground.  Alfred, however, being a coward, then left her to the two others, and hastened with Toinette to the breach in order to keep watch.  Alexandre, who had a handkerchief rolled up, all ready, thrust it into the poor lady’s mouth to stifle her cries.  Their intention was to stun her only and then make off with her little bag.

But the handkerchief must have slipped out, for she suddenly raised a shriek, a loud and terrible shriek.  And at that moment the others near the breach gave the alarm whistle:  some people were, doubtless, drawing near.  It was necessary to finish.  Alexandre knotted the handkerchief round the unhappy woman’s neck, while Richard with his fist forced her shriek back into her throat.  Red madness fell upon them, they both began to twist and tighten the handkerchief, and dragged the poor creature over the muddy ground until she stirred no more.  Then, as the whistle sounded again, they took the bag, left the body there with the handkerchief around the neck, and galloped, all four of them, as far as the Grenelle bridge, whence they flung the bag into the Seine, after greedily thrusting the coppers, and the white silver, and the yellow gold into their pockets.

When Mathieu read the particulars of the crime in the newspapers, he was seized with fright and hastened to the Rue de la Federation.  The murdered woman had been promptly identified, and the circumstance that the crime had been committed on that plot of vacant ground but a hundred yards or so from the house where Norine and Cecile lived upset him, filled him with a terrible presentiment.  And he immediately realized that his fears were justified when he had to knock three times at Norine’s door before Cecile, having recognized his voice, removed the articles with which it had been barricaded, and admitted him inside.  Norine was in bed, quite ill, and as white as her sheets.  She began to sob and shuddered repeatedly as she told him the story:  Madame Angelin’s visit the previous month, and the sudden arrival of Alexandre, who had seen the bag and had heard the promise of further help, at a certain hour on a certain