“Still, what motive could he have had?”

Jean burst into one of those discordant laughs that are, perhaps, the most frightful signs of despair.

“You may rest assured that the blood of the daughter will yield him a richer reward than did the father’s.  Chupin has been the vile instrument; but it was not he who conceived the crime.  You will have to seek higher for the culprit, much higher, in the finest chateau of the country, in the midst of an army of valets at Sairmeuse, in short!”

“Wretched man, what do you mean?”

“What I say.”

And coldly, he added: 

“Martial de Sairmeuse is the assassin.”  The priest recoiled, really appalled by the looks and manner of the grief-stricken man.

“You are mad!” he said, severely.

But Jean gravely shook his head.

“If I seem so to you, sir,” he replied, “it is only because you are ignorant of Martial’s wild passion for Marie-Anne.  He wished to make her his mistress.  She had the audacity to refuse this honor; that was a crime for which she must be punished.  When the Marquis de Sairmeuse became convinced that Lacheneur’s daughter would never be his, he poisoned her that she might not belong to another.”

Any attempt to convince Jean of the folly of his accusation would have been vain at that moment.  No proofs would have convinced him.  He would have closed his eyes to all evidence.

“To-morrow, when he is more calm, I will reason with him,” thought the abbe; then, turning to Jean, he said: 

“We cannot allow the body of the poor girl to remain here upon the floor.  Assist me, and we will place it upon the bed.”

Jean trembled from head to foot, and his hesitation was apparent.

“Very well!” he said, at last, after a severe struggle.

No one had ever slept upon this bed which poor Chanlouineau had destined for Marie-Anne.

“It shall be for her,” he said to himself, “or for no one.”

And it was Marie-Anne who rested there first—­dead.

When this sad task was accomplished, he threw himself into the same arm-chair in which Marie-Anne had breathed her last, and with his face buried in his hands, and his elbows supported upon his knees, he sat there as silent and motionless as the statues of sorrow placed above the last resting-places of the dead.

The abbe knelt at the head of the bed and began the recital of the prayers for the dead, entreating God to grant peace and happiness in heaven to her who had suffered so much upon earth.

But he prayed only with his lips.  In spite of his efforts, his mind would persist in wandering.

He was striving to solve the mystery that enshrouded Marie-Anne’s death.  Had she been murdered?  Could it be that she had committed suicide?

This explanation recurred to him, but he could not believe it.

But, on the other hand, how could her death possibly be the result of a crime?