his breast; his face was pale; his knees bent; his feet just touched the carpet. Succour was useless; he had ceased to live.
So dreadful a sight distracted the whole household. Madame de Feuchères was in hysterics. There was presence of mind enough, however, on the part of somebody to summon the authorities of St. Leu to take judicial cognizance of so fearful a catastrophe. Before ten o’clock, the chamber of the unfortunate Duke was converted into a tribunal of investigation. The state of the body was examined; Manowry, Bonnie, and Madame de Feuchères gave their evidence in due form; and, after a protracted deliberation, the Procureur-Général, who, on the news reaching Paris, had received instruction from the King to appear in person upon the inquest, reported to M. Dupont de l’Eure, the keeper of the seals, as the result of his researches, mainly as follows:—That the Duke de Bourbon had come to his death by strangulation; that there were no traces of violence on his person, or disorder in the furniture of the room; that the door leading into the chamber was bolted as usual; that the death of the Duke was his own act. Besides this summary, the Procureur-Général gave the depositions of the witnesses as to the events of the morning of the 27th, and as to the state of mind of the Duke previous to that date, which argued a certain evidence of suicidal intentions.
The obsequies of the Last of the Condés were performed with a just solemnity. His heart was carried to Chantilly; and there the Abbé Pelier, his almoner, delivered a funeral discourse. The audience was large and distinguished; a deep silence prevailed, and the impression was startling, when the preacher in a voice, full of solemnity and assurance, declared “that the Duke de Bourbon was innocent of his death in the sight of God.”
In fact, not only in the mind of this priest, the mourner and eulogiser of an affectionate benefactor, but in the minds of many others, especially in the inquisitive circles of Paris, there lurked behind this idea of suicide, so convincingly displayed, by the court physicians, magistrates, and lawyers, a dark suspicion of crime, and undefined, vague conjectures of treachery and midnight murder. Sinister rumours multiplied; they gained ground; the decision of the authorised inquest was reviewed and appealed from; and, at last, became the subject of legal investigation in the proceedings instituted by the Prince de Rohan, to set aside the will of the Duke de Bourbon, on the ground of undue influence and coercion. M. Hennequin, in his brilliant arguments before the Court of Première Instance on behalf of the heirs-at-law, resumed the examination of the mystery, less in its bearings upon the civil claims of his clients, than as an act of justice to an illustrious name, stained with the reproach of a cowardly and ignominious death; for the purpose, too, of giving to the dread suspicions that enveloped this dark tragedy, a definite form and expression that might, perhaps, evoke from the darkness that sheltered them the actors and instigators of the crime. This review, searching and ingenious, disclosed an array of facts and circumstances, which, though hardly sufficient to fix the charge of ascertained guilt, cast a deep shadow of suspicion upon the principal figurante in the scenes we have described.
The explanation of the Duke de Bourbon’s death by the supposition of his suicide had been assiduously upheld by Madame de Feuchères, from the moment of its fearful discovery. The door bolted from within; the silence that had reigned unbroken through the house during the whole of the night, so fatal to its master; the spirits of the Duke, shattered by the events of July, and ever after disturbed and unnatural;—these were advanced as indisputable proofs of his having died by his own hand, a victim to the exaggerated forebodings and chagrins that had oppressed him. But the whole tenor of his character and life, it was argued au contraire, were opposed to this hypothesis.
It is not common for old men to rush precipitately into the graves that wait for them at so small a distance; nor was there anything in the outward behaviour of the Duke to indicate the purpose of self-destruction. The journey for which he had made such elaborate preparations; the well-arranged plan of his departure, extending to the minutest details; it would be absurd to regard as only a ruse to cover the suspicion of his fatal intentions. Besides, the old man’s spirits, however affected by the shock of the three days, had gradually regained their calm and tranquillity, and on the very night of his death had been noticed as more than usually vivacious. His leave-taking of his guests, that cheerful “à demain,”—could it be, that, beneath this sure expectation of to-morrow, there lurked the dismal purpose of a stealthy suicide? Following him into his bed-chamber, and examining the details of his behaviour, as they were gathered from the state of things, on the next morning, by a species of testimony, ex necessitate rei, and the notion of his suicide, however firmly a matter of belief before, seems, by imperceptible degrees, to vanish from the mind. Not one of the Duke’s ordinary habits were interrupted at this time. His watch he had wound up as usual; the candles he had put out, with the exception of the bougie, which burned upon the hearth. It was his custom to make a knot upon his handkerchief on retiring, if he wished to be reminded of any engagement for the next day; and such a knot he had tied on this last night of his life, which was to know no morning. A strange attention to trifles on the part of a man determined upon death! It was evident, too, and admitted on all sides, that the Duke had lain down on his bed. But his movements from that time are unknown, and, saving such frightful conjectures as the imagination can form of that silent, secret, midnight death, so strange, so unnatural, requiring so much arrangement, and caution, and time,—suggest no possibility of its having been resolved on in the heat of passion, or accomplished with a sudden violence. His own act, or the act of another, it was artful, deliberate, and circumspect.
The Duke died, strangled between the carpets and the shutters; the room was found undisturbed, with the door bolted. But a simple experiment, with a thin piece of tape, showed how
