Restoration--forgetting that she was guillotined under the Empire!

With M. Ernest Daudet we return to history. No one had seriously studied
the crime of Quesnay before him. Some years ago he gave the correct
story of it in _Le Temps_ and we could not complain of its being only
what he meant it to be--a faithful and rapid résumé. Besides, M. Daudet
had only at his disposal the portfolios 8,170, 8,171, and 8,172 of the
Series F7 of the National Archives, and the reports sent to Réal by
Savoye-Rollin and Licquet, this cunning detective beside whom Balzac's
Corentin seems a mere schoolboy. Consequently the family drama escapes
M. Daudet, who, for that matter, did not have to concern himself with
it. It would not have been possible to do better than he did with the
documents within his reach.

Lenôtre has pushed his researches further. He has not limited himself to
studying, bit by bit, the voluminous report of the trial of 1808, which
fills a whole cupboard; to comparing and opposing the testimony of the
witnesses one against the other, examining the reports and enquiries,
disentangling the real names from the false, truth from error--in a
word, investigating the whole affair, a formidable task of which he only
gives us the substance here. Aided by his wonderful instinct and the
persistency of the investigator, he has managed to obtain access to
family papers, some of which were buried in old trunks relegated to the
attics, and in these papers has found precious documents which clear up
the depths of this affair of Quesnay where the mad passion of one poor
woman plays the greatest part.

And let no one imagine that he is going to read a romance in these
pages. It is an _historical_ study in the severest meaning of the word.
Lenôtre mentions no fact that he cannot prove. He risks no hypothesis