osing of the compromising animal. The same evening the Marquise,
completely reassured, wrote the following note to the lawyer:

"You see that my commissioner was speedy. I have had certain proof. He
went to Lanoe's wife, found the horse, got on it, went five or six
leagues, killed it, and brought away the skin. He brought me some of its
coat, and I send you half, so that you may see the truth for yourself,
and so have no fear. I am going to write to Soyer to say that he sold
the horse at Guibray for 350 livres."

In her joy at being delivered from her nightmare, she wrote the same day
to Colas, her groom, who was also in the Conciergerie: "Do not worry: do
you need money? I will send you twelve francs. The cursed horse! They
have sent me some of its skin, which I send for recognition. Burn this."
And to her chambermaid, Catherine Querey: "The horse is killed. My agent
skinned and burnt it. If you are asked about the missing horse, say that
it was sold. My miserable daughter gives me a great deal of pain."

Thus ends the story of the yellow horse. It finished its mysterious
odyssey in the stables of Savoye-Rollin, where Licquet often visited it,
as if he could thus learn its secret. For a doubt remained, and Real's
suggestion haunted him: "If the horse had only served for Mme. Acquet's
flight, they would not advise the strange precaution of taking it twelve
leagues away, killing, and skinning it on the spot." Even now a great
deal of mystery hangs about it. The horse had not been used by Mme.
Acquet, because we know that since the robbery of June 7th, she had not
left the neighbourhood of Falaise. Lefebre had ridden it from Tournebut;
but was that a fact to be so carefully concealed? Why did the Marquise
in her confidential letters insist on this point? "Say that the lawyer
returned to his house on foot," is a sentence that we find in each of
her letters. Since no mystery was made of the journey, why was its means
of accomplishment important?

There was something unexplained, and Licquet was not satisfied. His
tricks had brought no result. D'Ache was not found; Mme. Acquet had
disappeared; her description had in vain been sent to all the brigades.
Manginot, in despair of finding her, had renounced the search, and
Savoye-Rollin himself was "determined to suspend all action." Such was
the situation during the last days of September. It seemed most probable
that the affair of Quesnay and the great plot of which it was an