ing the report, immediately had his suspicions aroused against a traveller who had arrived at his house that same morning. This man came by the diligence from Bergerac, which passed through Quatre-Pavillons, the next place to Artigues. He carried in his hand a travelling-bag and a lady's work-bag. On arriving, he at once asked for breakfast, which he eagerly ate; then he ordered a fire, for, having travelled by diligence, he said, his clothes were very damp. He was taken into the hall, where a fire was lighted. He sat down before it, and presently fell asleep. On awaking, he repaired to his room and went to bed. During the whole day he remained shut up in his chamber. Supposing that he was fatigued and needed repose, they did not call him either for supper or to ascertain his name, although he had not exhibited his papers to the innkeeper.
The next morning, unable to shake off his suspicions of the evening before, Chaban went up and listened at the door of the stranger's room. He heard the man walking about the chamber. Placing his eye to the keyhole he saw him rubbing and washing some garments which appeared to him to be those of a woman, and which were stained with blood. Chaban no longer hesitated. He rushed to the house of M. Maxime, Commissary of Police, and told him of his suspicions and related what he had just witnessed.
Accompanied by two agents, M. Maxime at once hastened to the Rue de la Douane, and entered the room of the mysterious traveller. There he found a tall thin man with angular features, who was evidently making preparations for an immediate departure. Among the articles in his bag they discovered a woman's undergarments stained with blood and several pieces of jewelry; beside these there were a shawl and a dress which bore marks of having recently been washed; on comparing these with some shreds of clothing found in the road at Artigues they corresponded exactly. Up to this time the traveller, although visibly disturbed at the appearance of the police, had not seemed to comprehend the questions put to him. But when they showed him the garments taken from his bag and the accusing shreds, he clasped his head between his hands and in a choking voice, the accent of which betrayed Bearnaise origin, he cried: "No, no! I will not speak. I wish to write."
Paper was given him, and for two hours he wrote feverishly. He made a full confession, fuller than they had dared to hope for, and more horrible than they dreamed of. This man was not only the assassin of Artigues, but he was also the unpunished murderer of Villette.
He was named Pierre Vincent Éliçabide, and was thirty years of age. Born at Mauléon, he had from his childhood been destined for the Church. After having studied successively in the seminaries of Oloron, of Betharram, and of Bayonne, he left them without completing his course. He assumed an ecclesiastical garb and always spoke of taking holy orders; but his superiors had already judged him, and did not encourage him to enter the sacred profession. Endowed with some superficial talents, eloquent and intelligent, he was filled with an excessive pride and vanity. His learning gleaned from light reading and from new works of philosophy had supplied him words, but no ideas. He considered himself superior to his position, to his station in life, and destined by his genius to a calling more brilliant than that of a humble minister of religion.
Leaving the seminary of Bayonne, he went for a short time to the college of Passage, where a wise master studied attentively this cold overbearing character whose only passion was self-love and vanity. Éliçabide, considering himself unsuited for the ministry, turned his ideas toward a professorship. He secured a position as tutor at Ambares; but, at the end of two years, his disagreeable disposition and his absurd pretensions caused his dismissal by his pupil's father. He
