t to speak of were not known beyond the limits of the
department where it was committed.

"In the quarter of Saint-Pierre-des-Corps at Tours a woman whose husband
had disappeared at the time when the army of the Loire was disbanded,
and who had mourned him deeply, was conspicuous for her excess of
devotion. When the mission priests went through all the provinces to
restore the crosses that had been destroyed and to efface the traces
of revolutionary impiety, this widow was one of their most zealous
proselytes, she carried a cross and nailed to it a silver heart pierced
by an arrow; and, for a long time after, she went every evening to pray
at the foot of the cross which was erected behind the Cathedral apse.

"At last, overwhelmed by remorse, she confessed to a horrible crime. She
had killed her husband, as Fualdes was murdered, by bleeding him; she
had salted the body and packed it in pieces into old casks, exactly as
if it have been pork; and for a long time she had taken a piece every
morning and thrown it into the Loire. Her confessor consulted his
superiors, and told her that it would be his duty to inform the
public prosecutor. The woman awaited the action of the Law. The public
prosecutor and the examining judge, on examining the cellar, found the
husband's head still in pickle in one of the casks.--'Wretched woman,'
said the judge to the accused, 'since you were so barbarous as to throw
your husband's body into the river, why did you not get rid of the head?
Then there would have been no proof.'

"'I often tried, monsieur,' said she, 'but it was too heavy.'"

"Well, and what became of the woman?" asked the two Parisians.

"She was sentenced and executed at Tours," replied the lawyer; "but her
repentance and piety had attracted interest in spite of her monstrous
crime."

"And do you suppose," said Bianchon, "that we know all the tragedies
that are played out behind the curtain of private life that the public
never lifts?--It seems to me that human justice is ill adapted to judge
of crimes as between husband and wife. It has every right to intervene
as the police; but in equity it knows nothing of the heart of the
matter."

"The victim has in many cases been for so long the tormentor," said
Madame de la Baudraye guilelessly, "that the crime would sometimes seem
almost excusable if the accused could tell all."

This reply, led up to by Bianchon and by the story which Clagny had
told, left the two Parisians