shoulder. She fell at the feet of the assembled ladies drenched in blood. The Chevalier then ran downstairs, and cried to his brother, "Away! away! the job is done!" But as they hurried down the street they heard the women at the window crying for help and for a surgeon. The Abbé, in the idea that the Marquise was still living, had the incredible audacity to go back, enter the house, thrust the women aside, and put the pistol to the breast of his victim. Mme. Brunette struck up his hand, and the pistol did not go off. Thereupon the Abbé hit Mme. Brunette on the head, and again attempted to kill his sister-in-law, this time by braining her with the butt-end. Now, however, all the women present fell on him, dragged, beat, thrust, and succeeded eventually in expelling him from the house.
It was nine o'clock at night when the murderous attempt was made. Darkness favoured the assassins; they knew that they would be pursued, so they fled to an estate that belonged to the Marquess at Aubernas, thence by boat down the river to the sea, and escaped pursuit by fleeing from France.
The unfortunate Marquise lingered nineteen days. The surgeon was obliged to plant his knee against her back in order to obtain leverage for the extraction of the broken blade; but she died of the result of the poison rather than of her wounds.
The two scoundrels before they fled had sent a message post-haste to Avignon to inform the Marquess that his wife had been so treated by them that she could not possibly live. He did not hurry himself to go to Ganges, and when he arrived expressed no sympathy with her, no concern for what had been done, but pestered the dying woman about her will, for in
