“See, there she is!”

Far ahead of them under the trees they saw something white on which the sun gleamed down through the branches.  As they approached they gradually distinguished a human form lying there, its head toward the river, the face covered and the arms extended as though on a crucifix.

“I am fearfully warm,” said the mayor, and stooping down, he again soaked his handkerchief in the water and placed it round his forehead.

The doctor hastened his steps, interested by the discovery.  As soon as they were near the corpse, he bent down to examine it without touching it.  He had put on his pince-nez, as one does in examining some curious object, and turned round very quietly.

He said, without rising: 

“Violated and murdered, as we shall prove presently.  This little girl, moreover, is almost a woman—­look at her throat.”

The doctor lightly drew away the handkerchief which covered her face, which looked black, frightful, the tongue protruding, the eyes bloodshot.  He went on: 

“By heavens!  She was strangled the moment the deed was done.”

He felt her neck.

“Strangled with the hands without leaving any special trace, neither the mark of the nails nor the imprint of the fingers.  Quite right.  It is little Louise Roque, sure enough!”

He carefully replaced the handkerchief.

“There’s nothing for me to do.  She’s been dead for the last hour at least.  We must give notice of the matter to the authorities.”

Renardet, standing up, with his hands behind his back, kept staring with a stony look at the little body exposed to view on the grass.  He murmured: 

“What a wretch!  We must find the clothes.”

The doctor felt the hands, the arms, the legs.  He said: 

“She had been bathing no doubt.  They ought to be at the water’s edge.”

The mayor thereupon gave directions: 

“Do you, Principe” (this was his secretary), “go and find those clothes for me along the stream.  You, Maxime” (this was the watchman), “hurry on toward Rouy-le-Tors and bring with you the magistrate with the gendarmes.  They must be here within an hour.  You understand?”

The two men started at once, and Renardet said to the doctor: 

“What miscreant could have done such a deed in this part of the country?”

The doctor murmured: 

“Who knows?  Any one is capable of that.  Every one in particular and nobody in general.  No matter, it must be some prowler, some workman out of employment.  Since we have become a Republic we meet only this kind of person along the roads.”

Both of them were Bonapartists.

The mayor went on: 

“Yes, it can only be a stranger, a passer-by, a vagabond without hearth or home.”

The doctor added, with the shadow of a smile on his face: 

“And without a wife.  Having neither a good supper nor a good bed, he became reckless.  You can’t tell how many men there may be in the world capable of a crime at a given moment.  Did you know that this little girl had disappeared?”