ll was made. She
had consulted her sister concerning it, who said--"If there
is no other way of satisfying him, make the will;" and the
mother, when she heard of it, cried out--"Does he intend to
poison her?"

After some disputes, which took place between Peytel and his wife (there
were continual quarrels, and continual letters passing between them
from room to room), the latter was induced to write him a couple of
exaggerated letters, swearing "by the ashes of her father" that she
would be an obedient wife to him, and entreating him to counsel and
direct her. These letters were seen by members of the lady's family,
who, in the quarrels between the couple, always took the husband's part.
They were found in Peytel's cabinet, after he had been arrested for the
murder, and after he had had full access to all his papers, of which
he destroyed or left as many as he pleased. The accusation makes it
a matter of suspicion against Peytel, that he should have left these
letters of his wife's in a conspicuous situation.

"All these circumstances," says the accusation, "throw a frightful light
upon Peytel's plans. The letters and will of Madame Peytel are in the
hands of her husband. Three months pass away, and this poor woman is
brought to her home, in the middle of the night, with two balls in
her head, stretched at the bottom of her carriage, by the side of a
peasant."

"What other than Sebastian Peytel could have committed this
murder?--whom could it profit?--who but himself had an odious chain
to break, and an inheritance to receive? Why speak of the servant's
projected robbery? The pistols found by the side of Louis's body, the
balls bought by him at Macon, and those discovered at Belley among his
effects, were only the result of a perfidious combination. The pistol,
indeed, which was found on the hill of Darde, on the night of the 1st of
November, could only have belonged to Peytel, and must have been thrown
by him, near the body of his domestic, with the paper which had before
enveloped it. Who had seen this pistol in the hands of Louis? Among
all the gendarmes, work-women, domestics, employed by Peytel and his
brother-in-law, is there one single witness who had seen this weapon in
Louis's possession? It is true that Madame Peytel did, on one occasion,
speak to M. de Montrichard of a pistol; which had nothing to do,
however, with that found near Louis Rey."

Is this justice, or good reason? Just rev