ive me a mirror and a candle," he said to the maid and the cook who
stood at the door, not daring to enter.

While they went in search of these things he walked over to the stove;
the draught remained as he had turned it on the previous evening; he
opened it and returned to the bed.

His examination was not long; she had succumbed to asphyxiation caused
by the gas from the charcoal. Did it proceed from the construction of
the stove, or from a defect in the chimney? The inquest would decide
this; as for him, he could only prove the death.

On leaving him the evening before, Phillis, uneasy, told him that she
would come early in the morning to know what Madame Dammauville wished.
When he told her she was dead she was prostrated with despair; in that
case Florentin was lost. He tried to reassure her, but without success.

Nougarede, also, was in despair, and regretted that he had not proceeded
otherwise. And he tried to reassure Phillis; the prosecution rested on
the button and the struggle that had torn it off. Saniel would destroy
this hypothesis; he counted on him.

Saniel became, then, as he had been before the intervention of Madame
Dammauville, the only hope of Phillis and her mother, and to encourage
them he exaggerated the influence that his testimony would have.

"When I shall have demonstrated that there was no struggle, the
hypothesis of the torn button will crumble by itself."

"And if it is sustained, how and with what shall we overthrow it?"

If he had appeared as usual, she would have shared the confidence with
which he tried to inspire her; but since the death of Madame Dammauville
he was so changed, that she could not help being uneasy. Evidently it
was Madame Dammauville's death that made him so gloomy and irritable
that he would submit to no opposition. He saw the dangers of the
situation that this death created for Florentin, and with his usual
generosity he reproached himself for not having consented to take care
of her sooner; he would have saved her, certainly, as he had begun by
demanding the removal of the stove, and Florentin would have been saved
also.

The day of the trial arrived without a word from Madame Thezard, which
proved that Madame Dammauville had said nothing to her friend. It was
six months since the assassination occurred, and the affair had lost all
interest for the Parisian public; in the provinces it was still spoken
of, but at Paris it was a thing of the past. There is n