Causes Centres. pressed the search with the greatest per severance, and no long time elapsed before he was actually discovered in his humble home at Auxerre. When informed that he was sought for by his wife, the idea that he was to be arrested for .bigamy, then a capital crime, at once presented itself to his mind. He took to flight. Overtaken at Flavigny, he for the first time learned the real state of affairs; and now his apprehensions for himself were lost in anxiety for his wife. He returned to Auxerre, where he was compelled to avow his true position to the loving woman who had believed herself his wife. With a nobility of soul hardly to be expected under circumstances so trying, she did her best to comfort the repentant man and urged him to proceed, without a mo ment's delay, to the aid of his legitimate wife. Following her generous advice, De la Pivar diere started at once for Narbonne. Shocked at the disturbance of which he had been the unconscious cause, he proceeded forthwith to the judge of Remorentin and demanded a formal and legal recognition. To remove all question as to his identity, more than two hundred witnesses testified on oath that there could be no doubt that he was indeed De la Pivardiere. To account for his mysterious disappear ance from the chateau on the night of the supposed murder, he stated that, having been warned by one of the maidservants that his life was not secure so long as he remained under that roof, he resolved to depart under cover of the night; and tak ing with him his dog and gun, he had stealthily left the house and started for Auxerre on foot. In this connection we may remark that there is perhaps nothing more inexplicable in criminal records than the conduct of the two maidservants, Marguerite Mercier and Catherine Le Moine, in testifying as they did at the investigation of this affair. They had no grudge against their mistress, who treated them with the utmost kindness, and,
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in fact, they had everything to lose and nothing to gain by contributing to her ruin. It was believed by many, however, that the testimony of these girls had some foun dation in fact; that a murder had really been committed, but upon the person of the servant of De la Pivardiere, whom his mas ter, under some feeling of distrust, had caused to occupy his bed, while he himself escaped; and that next day, on discovering her mis take, Madame de la Pivardiere had, with the aid of the Abbe, buried the body of the mur dered valet in the garden. But there was no evidence of any kind to give reality to this hypothesis, and it was at least certain that M. de la Pivardiere had brought no ser vant with him to the chateau. One would have thought that his reap pearance and the mass of evidence as to the identity of De la Pivardiere would have set the question at rest. Far from it. The law ap peared to consider that if M. de la Pivardiere was not murdered and buried, he certainly ought to have been, and declined to accept the contrary without much more satisfac tory proof than that supplied by the reap pearance of the murdered individual among his gratulating friends. The licutenantcriminel made the matter a personal one; he refused to give any credence to the state ments of De la Pivardiere, and resolved to continue his investigation of the murder of a living man. He caused De la Pivardiere to be taken to the prison and confronted with the two maidservants who had related the story of his murder. To the surprise of every one, they positively denied his identity, pointing out the differences they professed to discover between their visitor and their master. They declared that they had never before seen the individual presented to them. It was imagined that the licutenant-criminel had prompted this denial. In this perplexity the procurmr du rot de manded the detention of De la Pivardiere, that the mystery might be cleared up; but the authorities refused to interfere, and he
