decoy him into a hideous snare. Public opinion suggests that
jealousy of your former assistant's success, and mortification at your
own failure, were the real motives. Or was it not perhaps that you had
been in the habit of rendering somewhat dubious services to some of your
promiscuous clients?

Fenayrou: Nothing of the kind, I swear it!

President: Do not protest too much. Remember that among your
acquaintances you were suspected of cheating at cards. As a chemist you
had been convinced of fraud. Perhaps Aubert knew something against you.
Some act of poisoning, or abortion, in which you had been concerned?
Many witnesses have believed this.

Your mother-in-law is said to have remarked, "My son-in-law will end in
jail."

Fenayrou (bursting into tears): This is too dreadful.

President: And Dr. Durand, an old friend of Aubert, remembers the
deceased saying to him, "One has nothing to fear from people one holds
in one's hands."

Fenayrou: I don't know what he meant.

President: Or, considering the cruelty, cowardice, the cold calculation
displayed in the commission of the crime, shall we say this was a
woman's not a man's revenge. You have said your wife acted as your
slave--was it not the other way about?

Fenayrou: No; it was my revenge, mine alone.

The view that regarded Mme. Fenayrou as a soft, malleable paste was not
the view of the President.

"Why," he asked the woman, "did you commit this horrible murder, decoy
your lover to his death?" "Because I had repented," was the answer; "I
had wronged my husband, and since he had been condemned for fraud,
I loved him the more for being unfortunate. And then I feared for my
children."

President: Is that really the case?

Mme. Fenayrou: Certainly it is.

President: Then your whole existence has been one of lies and hypocrisy.
Whilst you were deceiving your husband and teaching your children to
despise him you were covering him with caresses.

You have played false to both husband and lover--to Aubert in decoying
him to his death, to your husband by denouncing him directly you were
arrested. You have betrayed everybody. The only person you have not
betrayed is yourself. What sort of a woman are you? As you and Aubert
went into the drawing-room on the evening of the murder you said loudly,
"This is the way," so that your husband, hearing your voice outside,
should not strike you by mistake in the darkness. If Lucien had not told
us that you attacked Auber