her husband boasted that he had not read
a newspaper for ten years, she had made her _salon_ a kind of
parliamentary centre, which had its influence on political affairs.

Although Jacques de Boiscoran's parents were still alive, he possessed
a considerable fortune of his own--five or six thousand dollars a year.
This fortune, which consisted of the Chateau of Boiscoran, the farms,
meadows, and forests belonging to it, had been left to him by one of his
uncles, the oldest brother of his father, who had died a widower, and
childless, in 1868. M. de Boiscoran was at this moment about twenty-six
or twenty-seven years old, dark complexion, tall, strong, well made, not
exactly a handsome man, but having, what was worth more, one of those
frank, intelligent faces which prepossess one at first sight.

His character was less well known at Sauveterre than his person. Those
who had had any business with him described him as an honorable, upright
man: his companions spoke of him as cheerful and gay, fond of pleasure,
and always in good humor. At the time of the Prussian invasion, he had
been made a captain of one of the volunteer companies of the district.
He had led his men bravely under fire, and conducted himself so well on
the battlefield, that Gen. Chanzy had rewarded him, when wounded, with
the cross of the legion of honor.

"And such a man should have committed such a crime at Valpinson," said
M. Daubigeon to the magistrate. "No, it is impossible! And no doubt he
will very easily scatter all our doubts to the four winds."

"And that will be done at once," said young Ribot; "for here we are."

In many of the provinces of France the name of _chateau_ is given to
almost any little country-house with a weathercock on its pointed roof.
But Boiscoran was a real chateau. It had been built towards the end
of the seventeenth century, in wretched taste, but massively, like a
fortress. Its position is superb. It is surrounded on all sides by woods
and forests; and at the foot of the sloping garden flows a little river,
merrily splashing over its pebbly bed, and called the Magpie on account
of its perpetual babbling.

VII.

It was seven o'clock when the carriage containing the justice drove into
the courtyard at Boiscoran,--a vast court, planted with lime-trees, and
surrounded by farm buildings. The chateau was wide awake. Before her
house-door, the farmer's wife was cleaning the huge caldron in which she
had prepared the mo