he rushed out, repeating this cry and calling for assistance.
The neighbors crowded to the house; magistrates, officers of police, and physicians were speedily at the scene of the crime.
In the opinion of the medical men Madame Benoit had been dead for about an hour, and she had apparently been killed while asleep; for there was no disorder about the bed upon which she lay. Her position was that of a person sleeping, and at the first glance of the eye her body presented no sign of any wound; but on raising the head, which was bent slightly forward, an enormous gash extending across the throat was discovered. This wound had evidently been produced by a single blow with a very sharp instrument.
One of the windows opening upon the place was open, as was also the shutter. This shutter was the same which, according to Frédéric, his mother had so carefully fastened the evening before, the hook of which she had taken the precaution to tie with a string. One of the panes of glass in this window was broken. The aperture made was so surrounded by jagged glass that it seemed impossible to introduce one's hand through it without cutting it. The ward robe in this chamber was open; the box it contained had been forced by means of a pointed instrument introduced into the lock, and the bag containing the six thousand francs had been stolen; another bag, in which were two thousand francs, had been taken from the wardrobe and placed upon the floor, where it was found by those who first entered the room.
It was observed with no little surprise that there was no trace of mud or of blood in this room; and yet if the murderers had come from without, they must necessarily have crossed this chamber to enter Madame Benoit's sleeping-room as well as to withdraw. There was no indication of their passage upon the sill of the open window.
On being interrogated the next day, Frédéric declared that he, his mother, and Louise Feucher had retired at about half-past eight; that at about ten o'clock, feeling indisposed, he had gone down and asked his cousin for the key of the wardrobe (the same in which the six thousand francs were placed); that he had taken some sugar from the wardrobe and made himself a glass of sugar and water; that he then went back to his room, leaving the key in the lock of the wardrobe; that about midnight he was awakened by a loud cry from his mother, and thinking that she had a nightmare, to which she was subject, he again arose, and went down and called to his mother several times; that on passing the door of the chamber where he had obtained the sugar, he saw the window open and glass scattered upon the floor; that, seized with fright, he rushed out of the house and called the brothers Dossereau. He added that the first that he knew of his mother's fate was from the exclamation of the surgeon.
Louise Feucher, on her part, declared that she retired at nine or half-past nine o'clock, after Madame Benoit had gone to bed and after taking her aunt's candle; she added that she heard no noise until her cousin, leaping from his bed, awoke her; that then she thought she heard a sound as of some one fleeing; that Frédéric, after having called the brothers Dossereau, had opened the street door and said to her that he had at that moment seen a woman running across the Place de Vouziers; that she and her cousin had entered the room where the robbery took place; that Frédéric asked her several times to call his mother; that she called vainly, and then approaching her room she saw the inanimate body of her aunt and cried, "Mon Dieu, she is dead!" that at the moment she drew back Dossereau, who had arrived, himself entered Madame Benoit's chamber.
Frédéric declared, from the first, that five or six thousand francs in gold had been stolen; he added that his father had taken fifteen hundred francs on his departure the day before. M. Benoit, who did not arrive at Vou-
