s. For
the Government and the local functionaries everything was at stake; the
cry for revenge of the citizens, anxious for their safety, the defiance
and rancor of the Bonapartists, grew more violent every day, the papers
demanded the conviction of the guilty persons, the rural population was
on the point of a revolt. A witness who had no share in the deed
itself, like Madame Mirabel, could quickly change and terminate
everything; persuasion was brought to bear, she was promised, as far as
the oath to which she subscribed in the Bancal house was concerned, a
written dispensation from Rome, and a Jesuit priest whom the Mayor
brought to the chateau expressly confirmed this. When everything proved
vain and Clarissa began to oppose the cruel pressure by a stony calm,
she was threatened with imprisonment, with having her disgrace and
depravity made public through all France. And at these words of the
Prefect her father fell upon his knees before her, as she had done that
morning before him, and conjured her to speak. This was too much; with
a shriek, she fell fainting to the floor.

Clarissa believed she remembered having spent the evening of the
nineteenth of March with the Pal family, in Rodez; she believed she
remembered that Madame Pal herself remarked to her the following day:
"We were so merry yesterday, and perhaps at that very time poor Fualdes
was being murdered." Upon referring to this, the Pals made a positive
denial of everything; they denied that Clarissa had paid them a visit;
nay, in their vague, cowardly fright, they even declared that they had
been on bad terms with Madame Mirabel for years.

To human pity spirits blinded by fear and delusion were no longer
accessible. Even had the sound sense of a single individual attempted
resistance, it would have been useless; the giant avalanche could not
be stayed. A diabolical plot was concocted, and it was the Prefect,
Count d'Estournel, who perfected it in such wise that it promised the
best success. Toward one o'clock at night a carriage drove into the
castle grounds; Clarissa was compelled to enter it; the President, the
Magistrate, the Prefect, were her companions. The carriage stopped in
front of the Bancal house. Monsieur Seguret led his daughter into the
ground floor room on the left, a cave-like chamber, gloomy as a bad
conscience. On the shelf over the stove there stood a miserable little
lamp whose light fell on two sheriff's officers and a lawyer's cler