Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 01.pdf/345

306 "When I arose, the body was cold. A fearful tremor seized me. I pushed the body into a little ditch near the place of the deed, and walked rapidly into Paris.

"At ten o'clock I was in my bed, stifled by a smell of blood, and all my faculties completely, overthrown. The murderous instruments I had mechanically brought home with me, as well as the boy's coat, and I placed them with the other things belonging to the child in a trunk which I rarely used. The knife, which I found in my pocket the first time I went out to walk, I cast into the Seine with a movement of horror.

"All my thoughts now turned to Marie. The mournful feelings which oppressed me in thinking of her, only served to fix me in my one idea. With the same hand with which I had been wont to bestow charity in times of prosperity, I caressed the hammer as an instrument which by a single blow could give a sudden and painless death.

"But Marie!—I had promised to make her happy. Joseph!—I had promised to be his father. Mathilde!—I had adopted her as my child And then without me my mother would die inconsolable. My poor father,—in a short time he would perhaps be reduced to poverty and indigence. No; I shall have time to kill them all.

"In this way I reasoned; but my acts are called the assassinations of Villette and Artigues.

"Joseph had been dead two days. I must go and settle the expenses of the journey with the person who accompanied him. I called at her house. I was polite, but hastened to take my leave after a short interview. Mademoiselle Lenoir asked me about the boy, and I told her he was very well.

"Frequent letters came from Marie. They did not say much about Joseph, but they expected that the replies would speak of him. The answers did indeed speak of him as though he still lived.

"Dear, poor Marie! happiness exists only in the imagination. Be happy in your ignorance and in your hopes; picture to yourself that all the felicities in the world await you. Every letter of hers received a quiet, apparently truthful response."

Éliçabide continued to write to Marie Anizat in the most tender terms; he pressed her more than ever to abandon the peaceful existence which she found at Pau. At last he succeeded in conquering her hesitation, and persuaded her to depart, telling her he had found for her a place as companion in a family in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. He wrote her he would meet her at Bordeaux on the 6th of May at a hotel kept by one Meunier in the Rue Corbin. In this last letter, which bore the date of April 16, Éliçabide still spoke of her son as though he were alive and well.

Agreeably to the directions she had received, Marie Anizat arrived at Bordeaux on the day named, accompanied by her daughter Mathilde, and went to the hotel designated by Éliçabide.

On the 3d of May, Éliçabide left Paris and reached Bordeaux on the 7th. He went to another hotel than the one to which he had directed Marie. Entirely out of money, he wrote immediately on his arrival to a sister living at Ivrac, and on the 8th received from her one hundred francs. Having received them, he at once hastened to the hotel where Marie had been anxiously awaiting him for two days.

At the suggestion of Éliçabide, on the 9th, Marie consented to pass that night with his sister at Ivrac, and the next day they were to take the diligence which passed through that town for Paris.

About eight or half-past eight in the evening they took a carriage and left the hotel to go to a place called Quatre-Pavillons.

Just before their departure a man named Justine Casauran, an old friend of Marie Anizat's, who had chanced to see her in the street, came to call upon her. They all dined together. Éliçabide appeared genial and smiling, and enlivened the repast with amusing stories. Marie's face beamed with pleasure.

Near the town of Ivrac there is, upon the left of the highway, about a quarter of an hour's walk from Quatre-Pavillons, a wind