--

Neither the outer gate nor the front door showed any marks of violence.
The key was in the lock of the door, inside. Not a single bar had been
wretched; the locks, shutters, and bolts were all untampered with. The
walls showed no traces that could betray the passage of the criminals.
The chimney-posts, of red clay, afforded no opportunity for ingress or
escape, and the roofing was sound and unbroken, showing no damage by
violence.

On entering the first-floor rooms, the magistrates, the gendarmes, and
Bibi-Lupin found the widow Pigeau strangled in her bed and the woman
strangled in hers, each by means of the bandana she wore as a nightcap.
The three thousand francs were gone, with the silver-plate and the
trinkets. The two bodies were decomposing, as were those of the little
dog and of a large yard-dog.

The wooden palings of the garden were examined; none were broken. The
garden paths showed no trace of footsteps. The magistrate thought it
probable that the robber had walked on the grass to leave no foot-prints
if he had come that way; but how could he have got into the house?
The back door to the garden had an outer guard of three iron bars,
uninjured; and there, too, the key was in the lock inside, as in the
front door.

All these impossibilities having been duly noted by Monsieur Popinot,
by Bibi-Lupin, who stayed there a day to examine every detail, by the
public prosecutor himself, and by the sergeant of the gendarmerie at
Nanterre, this murder became an agitating mystery, in which the Law and
the Police were nonplussed.

This drama, published in the _Gazette des Tribunaux_, took place in the
winter of 1828-29. God alone knows what excitement this puzzling crime
occasioned in Paris! But Paris has a new drama to watch every morning,
and forgets everything. The police, on the contrary, forgets nothing.

Three months after this fruitless inquiry, a girl of the town, whose
extravagance had invited the attention of Bibi-Lupin's agents, who
watched her as being the ally of several thieves, tried to persuade a
woman she knew to pledge twelve silver spoons and forks and a gold watch
and chain. The friend refused. This came to Bibi-Lupin's ears, and he
remembered the plate and the watch and chain stolen at Nanterre. The
commissioners of the Mont-de-Piete, and all the receivers of stolen
goods, were warned, while Manon la Blonde was subjected to unremitting
scrutiny.

It was very soon discovered that Manon la B