under which the Corsican had been
condemned to death. Though the case is a very curious one, our account
of it must be brief. It is impossible to introduce a long digression
at the climax of a narrative already so much prolonged, since its only
interest is in so far as it concerns Jacques Collin, the vertebral
column, so to speak, which, by its sinister persistency, connects _Le
Pere Goriot_ with _Illusions perdues_, and _Illusions perdues_ with this
Study. And, indeed, the reader's imagination will be able to work out
the obscure case which at this moment was causing great uneasiness to
the jury of the sessions, before whom Theodore Calvi had been tried.
For a whole week, since the criminal's appeal had been rejected by the
Supreme Court, Monsieur de Granville had been worrying himself over
the case, and postponing from day to day the order for carrying out the
sentence, so anxious was he to reassure the jury by announcing that on
the threshold of death the accused had confessed the crime.

A poor widow of Nanterre, whose dwelling stood apart from the township,
which is situated in the midst of the infertile plain lying between
Mount-Valerian, Saint-Germain, the hills of Sartrouville, and
Argenteuil, had been murdered and robbed a few days after coming into
her share of an unexpected inheritance. This windfall amounted to three
thousand francs, a dozen silver spoons and forks, a gold watch and
chain and some linen. Instead of depositing the three thousand francs
in Paris, as she was advised by the notary of the wine-merchant who had
left it her, the old woman insisted on keeping it by her. In the
first place, she had never seen so much money of her own, and then
she distrusted everybody in every kind of affairs, as most common and
country folk do. After long discussion with a wine-merchant of Nanterre,
a relation of her own and of the wine-merchant who had left her the
money, the widow decided on buying an annuity, on selling her house at
Nanterre, and living in the town of Saint-Germain.

The house she was living in, with a good-sized garden enclosed by a
slight wooden fence, was the poor sort of dwelling usually built by
small landowners in the neighborhood of Paris. It had been hastily
constructed, with no architectural design, of cement and rubble, the
materials commonly used near Paris, where, as at Nanterre, they are
extremely abundant, the ground being everywhere broken by quarries open
to the sky. This is the