d of the Curat
woods, where the event had happened, and took the depositions of more
than thirty witnesses. Then, eight days after I had been arrested, the
writ of arrest was issued. If my mind had been less distracted, or if
some one had interested himself in me, this breach of the law and
many others that occurred during the trial might have been adduced as
powerful arguments in my favour. They would at least have shown that the
proceedings were inspired by some secret hatred. In the whole course of
the affair an invisible hand directed everything with pitiless haste and
severity.

The first examination had produced but a single indictment against me;
this came from Mademoiselle Leblanc. The men who had taken part in the
hunt declared that they knew nothing, and had no reason to regard the
occurrence as a deliberate attempt at murder. Mademoiselle Leblanc,
however, who had an old grudge against me for certain jokes I had
ventured to make at her expense, and who, moreover, had been suborned,
as I learned afterward, declared that Edmee, on recovering from her
first swoon, at a time when she was quite calm and in full possession of
her reason, had confided to her, under a pledge of secrecy, that she had
been insulted, threatened, dragged from her horse, and finally shot by
me. This wicked old maid, putting together the various revelations
that Edmee had made in her delirium, had, cleverly enough, composed a
connected narrative, and added to it all the embellishments that hatred
could suggest. Distorting the incoherent words and vague impressions of
her mistress, she declared upon oath that Edmee had seen me point the
barrel of my carbine at her, with the words, "As I swore, you shall die
by my hand."

Saint-Jean, who was examined the same day, declared that he knew nothing
beyond what Mademoiselle Leblanc had told him that evening, and his
deposition was very similar to hers. He was honest enough, but dull and
narrow-minded. From love of exactness, he omitted no trifling detail
which might be interpreted against me. He asserted that I had always
been subject to pains in the head, during which I lost my senses; that
several times previously, when my nerves were disordered, I had spoken
of blood and murder to some individual whom I always fancied I could
see; and, finally, that my temper was so violent that I was "capable of
throwing the first thing that came to hand at any one's head, though
as a fact I had never, to hi