The two imprints were identical!  The same teeth had bitten into both apples!

“Madame—­” the Prefect of Police began.

“No, no,” she cried, seized with a fit of fury, “no, it’s not true....  This is all just a nightmare....  No, you are never going to arrest me?  I in prison!  Why, it’s horrible!...  What have I done?  Oh, I swear that you are mistaken—­”

She took her head between her hands.

“Oh, my brain is throbbing as if it would burst!  What does all this mean?  I have done no wrong....  I knew nothing.  It was you who told me this morning....  Could I have suspected?  My poor husband ... and that dear Edmond who loved me ... and whom I loved!  Why should I have killed them?  Tell me that!  Why don’t you answer?” she demanded.  “People don’t commit murder without a motive....  Well?...  Well?...  Answer me, can’t you?”

And once more convulsed with anger, standing in an aggressive attitude, with her clenched hands outstretched at the group of magistrates, she screamed: 

“You’re no better than butchers ... you have no right to torture a woman like this....  Oh, how horrible!  To accuse me ... to arrest me ... for nothing! ...  Oh, it’s abominable! ...  What butchers you all are! ...  And it’s you in particular,” addressing Perenna, “it’s you—­yes, I know—­it’s you who are the enemy.

“Oh, I understand!  You had your reasons, you were here last night....  Then why don’t they arrest you?  Why not you, as you were here and I was not and know nothing, absolutely nothing of what happened....  Why isn’t it you?”

The last words were pronounced in a hardly intelligible fashion.  She had no strength left.  She had to sit down, with her head bent over her knees, and she wept once more, abundantly.

Perenna went up to her and, raising her forehead and uncovering the tear-stained face, said: 

“The imprints of teeth in both apples are absolutely identical.  There is therefore no doubt whatever but that the first comes from you as well as the second.”

“No!” she said.

“Yes,” he affirmed.  “That is a fact which it is materially impossible to deny.  But the first impression may have been left by you before last night, that is to say, you may have bitten that apple yesterday, for instance—­”

She stammered: 

“Do you think so?  Yes, perhaps, I seem to remember—­yesterday morning—­”

But the Prefect of Police interrupted her.

“It is useless, Madame; I have just questioned your servant, Silvestre.  He bought the fruit himself at eight o’clock last evening.  When M. Fauville went to bed, there were four apples in the dish.  At eight o’clock this morning there were only three.  Therefore the one found in the garden is incontestably the fourth; and this fourth apple was marked last night.  And the mark is the mark of your teeth.”

She stammered: 

“It was not I ... it was not I ... that mark is not mine.”