It was shortly after the murder of the money-changer
Joseph. A bouquet was sent from La Force to a woman's
prison, Saint Lazare or the Madelonnettes. In this
bouquet was a sprig of white lilac which one of the women
prisoners selected.

A month or two elapsed; the woman was released from
prison. She was extremely enamoured, through the white
lilac, of the unknown master she had given to herself. She
began to perform for him her strange function of sister,
mother, and mystic spouse, ignorant of his name, knowing
only his prison number. All her miserable savings,
religiously deposited with the clerk of the prison, went to
this man. In order the better to affiance herself to him,
she took advantage of the advent of spring to cull a sprig
of real lilac in the fields. This sprig of lilac, attached by
a piece of sky-blue ribbon to the head of his bed, formed
a pendant to a sprig of consecrated box, an ornament which
these poor desolate alcoves never lack. The lilac withered
thus.

This woman, like all Paris, had heard of the affair of
the Palais-Royal and of the two Italians, Malagutti and
Ratta, arrested for the murder of the money-changer.

She thought little about the tragedy, which did not concern
her, and lived only in her white lilac. This lilac was
all in all to her; she thought only of doing her "duty"
to it.