Cases of Circumstantial Evidence

Twenty-Six

641 Twenty-Six Allhallows came and went. The churches were hung with black, the candles burned for the dead, and in the white frost of early morning the footsteps of those who approached the churches were printed in black, at first singly, then overlapping each other repeatedly until all individual prints were merged. Marianne Larcher lighted her candles in the old church of Saint Paul, as she had lighted them year after year, for her parents, for her dead children, and tried to pray. She prayed for the dead in the words which she had been taught. When she tried to pray for the living she found herself in an argument with herself, always the same argument. She rose from her knees and left the church, turning her back upon the confessional, drawing her shawl about her head, not knowing and not caring whether her neighbors had seen her. Since her conversation with Jules she had come to think of them all as leagued against her with the housekeeper of Monsieur Pinon. She saw no reason to believe that the woman had kept her malice to herself; and when even Simone’s friendly gossip had betrayed her to Jules, she could guess what stories were circulating against her. At Versailles the King touched the sick, and the King’s physicians recorded a great number of cures. In Paris the price of bread was still high. There was a rumor that the 642 Janet Lewis wheat had been reserved for the King’s armies. In spite of all the edicts, the number of penniless within the city increased daily. They swarmed the streets, drawing together into little bands in which there was no warmth of common sympathy, but merely an agglutination of their misery. Marianne, returning home after nightfall, encountered them more than once, gathered about the doorways of the rich, as they had gathered the winter before. The poor, wrapped in anonymous rags, in old coats and torn mantles, their feet and ankles bound with strips of cloth which served as footwear, stood and cried aloud that they were famished. They attempted no violence. They merely stood and filled the darkness with their lamentations. Marianne had to pass through these crowds to continue on her way. They made no difficulty for her. When a gleam of light fell upon their faces, she saw no hostility in their eyes, and no curiosity. She might have been one of them. One rainy night she encountered such a crowd midway in her own street, before the Hôtel d’Aubricourt, just at the moment when the police descended upon it with torches and sticks. That night she locked the door of the kitchen from within, and kindled a small blaze on the hearth, and sat close to it, drying her wet feet and rubbing them with her hands. Her leather shoes had gone to pieces. She had no money to have them mended, and the wooden shoes, which she now wore everywhere, were cold. The margin between her condition and that of the homeless poor had grown more narrow with every passing day. She looked about the room for something more that she might sell; there was not much left. She thought of how that room had formerly been filled with the warmth and goodness of life, and a sense of despair came over her. She could not wait much longer for Jean to be released, for Nicolas to return, to have word from Paul, for something 643 t h e g h o s t o f m o n s i e u r s c a r r o n to happen to change the situation in which she was trapped. It had been a long time since the abbé Têtu had written his letter. Madame de Maintenon must have a hard heart, or else she had less power over the King than all the songs and libels led one to believe. She hoped constantly for Jean’s release, but she could not imagine, try as she would, how life would go on for them after that. She tried to think of Jean and Nicolas together , rebuilding their fortune, but she could not fit herself into the picture. As for Paul, his physical presence being removed from her life, and the memory of it constantly receding in time, there were days when she felt as if she...