although the witnesses were numerous enough, they possessed but
little information. The depositions of the neighbours, successively
interrogated, were empty, incoherent, and incomplete. No one knew
anything of the victim, who was a stranger in the country. Many
presented themselves as witnesses moreover, who came forward less to
afford information than to gratify their curiosity. A gardener's wife,
who had been friendly with the deceased, and a milk-woman with whom
she dealt, were alone able to give a few insignificant though precise
details.

In a word, after three hours of laborious investigation, after having
undergone the infliction of all the gossip of the country, after
receiving evidence the most contradictory, and listened to commentaries
the most ridiculous, the following is what appeared the most reliable to
the commissary.

Twelve years before, at the beginning of 1850, the woman Lerouge had
made her appearance at Bougival with a large wagon piled with furniture,
linen, and her personal effects. She had alighted at an inn, declaring
her intention of settling in the neighbourhood, and had immediately gone
in quest of a house. Finding this one unoccupied, and thinking it would
suit her, she had taken it without trying to beat down the terms, at
a rental of three hundred and twenty francs payable half yearly and in
advance, but had refused to sign a lease.

The house taken, she occupied it the same day, and expended about a
hundred francs on repairs.

She was a woman about fifty-four or fifty-five years of age, well
preserved, active, and in the enjoyment of excellent health. No one