top of the corpse, she exclaimed:

"You shall not have it--it's mine--it's mine now. They have
killed her for me, and I want to keep her--you shall not have
her----"

All the men, affected and not knowing how to act, remained standing
around her. Renardet fell on his knees and said to her:

"Listen, La Roque, it is necessary, in order to find out who killed her.
Without this, we could not find out. We must make a search for the man in
order to punish him. When we have found him we'll give her up to you. I
promise you this."

This explanation bewildered the woman, and a feeling of hatred manifested
itself in her distracted glance.

"So then they'll arrest him?"

"Yes, I promise you that."

She rose up, deciding to let them do as they liked, but when the captain
remarked:

"It is surprising that her clothes were not found," a new idea, which she
had not previously thought of, abruptly entered her mind, and she asked:

"Where are her clothes? They're mine. I want them. Where have they been
put?"

They explained to her that they had not been found. Then she demanded
them persistently, crying and moaning.

"They're mine--I want them. Where are they? I want them!"

The more they tried to calm her the more she sobbed and persisted in her
demands. She no longer wanted the body, she insisted on having the
clothes, as much perhaps through the unconscious cupidity of a wretched
being to whom a piece of silver represents a fortune as through maternal
tenderness.

And when the little body, rolled up in blankets which had been brought
out from Renardet's house, had disappeared in the vehicle, the old woman
standing under the trees, sustained by the mayor and the captain,
exclaimed:

"I have nothing, nothing, nothing in the world, not even her little cap
--her little cap."

The cure, a young priest, had just arrived. He took it on himself to
accompany the mother, and they went away together toward the village. The
mother's grief was modified by the sugary words of the clergyman, who
promised her a thousand compensations. But she kept repeating: "If I had
only her little cap." This idea now dominated every other.

Renardet called from the distance:

"You will lunch with us, Monsieur l'Abbe--in an hour's time."

The priest turned his head round and replied:

"With pleasure, Monsieur le Maire. I'll be with you at twelve."

And they all directed their steps toward the house, whose gray front,
with the large tow