may recollect, with Lucille. Her she had
armed with the hateful relic of her husband's uncompleted crime,
conscious that its exhibition would sow between her and Le Prun
suspicion, fear, and enmity enough to embitter their lives. She had at
first intended declaring all the truth, but feared the explosion of Le
Prun's fury, and doubted, too, whether the girl would believe her. The
rest the reader knows.

As there was no reason to doubt Blassemare's statement, and no actual
suspicion attached to him, he was merely examined as witness.

Le Prun is, we need scarcely remind the student of old French criminal
cases, a celebrated name in the annals of guilt. Suspicion, by a strange
coincidence, fell upon the servant whom we have mentioned, and this man
having been, according to the atrocious practice of the civil law, put
to the torture confessed his having, at the instigation of Le Prun,
murdered the unfortunate Marie Guadin, so contriving as to make it
appear that the house had been entered and plundered by thieves.

A full confession, after condemnation, was extorted by the question,
that dreadful ordeal, from Le Prun, who ultimately suffered the extreme
penalty of the law, as every body knows, upon the Place de Greve.

That portion of Le Prun's immense property which was not appropriated by
the crown, went, of course, to Gabriel, the peasant boy of Charrebourg.
He purchased an estate near it, and was ultimately ennobled. His
grandson, the Count de St. M----, distinguished himself in the Austrian
service, and after the Restoration, obtained a distinguished position in
the court of Louis XVIII.

The king remitted a large portion of the line in favor of Julie and of
Lucille. As, however, some grave suspicions were entertained by the
advisers of his majesty both as to Lucille's avowed, and, as we know,
_real_ ignorance of the existence of Le Prun's first wife when she
consented to marry him, and also as to her subsequent conduct in
relation to De Secqville, the remission in her favor was coupled with a
condition that she should take the veil. This was in effect a command;
and Lucille entered a convent with a cheerful acquiescence in this
condition which astonished all who knew the facts of her story.

Julie, of course, on learning the pre-engagement of De Secqville's
affections, and being relieved from the influence which had hitherto
held her to her involuntary engagement, demanded her freedom, and De
Secqville, as may