doctor came in and announced: “Rosalie Tournel is dead.”
M. Daron shuddered and immediately demanded, “What of?” “Of an angina.” The little old man uttered an “ah” of relief. Then he declared: “She was too fat, too big; she must have eaten too much. When I get to be her age, I’ll be more careful.” (He was two years older than Rosalie, but never admitted to being over seventy.)
A few months later, it was the turn of Henry Brissot. M. Daron was very moved. This time it was a man—thin, within three months of his own age, and very prudent. He dared ask for no details, but waited anxiously for the doctor to tell him. “Ah, he died suddenly, just like that? He was very well last week. He must have done something unwise, Doctor.” The doctor, who was enjoying himself, replied, “I believe not. His children tell me he was very careful.”
Then, no longer able to contain himself, M. Daron demanded, with anguish, “But … but … What did he die of, then?”
“Of pleurisy.”
That was joyful news, really joyful. The little old man clapped his dry hands. “I knew it! I told you had had done something unwise. Pleurisy doesn’t come just by itself. He took a breath of fresh air after his dinner, and the cold lodged on his chest. Pleurisy! That is an accident, not an illness. Only crazy men die of pleurisy.”
And he ate his dinner gaily, talking of those who remained. “There are only fifteen now, but they are all strong, aren’t they? All of life is like that, the weakest fall first; people who go beyond thirty have a good chance to reach sixty, those who pass sixty often get to eighty; and those who pass eighty almost always reach the century mark, because they are the most robust, the most careful, the most hardened.”
Still two others disappeared during the year, one of dysentery and the other of a choking fit. M. Daron derived a great deal of amusement from the death of the former, and concluded that he must have eaten something exciting the day before. “Dysentery is the disease of the imprudent; you should have watched over his hygiene, Doctor.” As for the choking fit, it could only have come from a heart condition, hitherto unrecognized.
But one evening the doctor announced the passing of Paul Timonet, a kind of mummy, of whom it had been hoped to make a centenarian, a living advertisement for the watering place. When M. Daron asked, as usual, “What did he die of?” the doctor replied, “Really, I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know? One always knows. Wasn’t there some organic lesion?”
The doctor shook his head. “No. None.”
“Perhaps some infection of the liver or kidneys?”
“No—they were perfectly sound.”
“Did you observe whether the stomach functioned regularly? A stroke is often caused by bad digestion.”
“There was no stroke.”
M. Daron, very perplexed, became excited. “But he certainly died of something! What is your opinion?”
The doctor raised his arms. “I absolutely do not know. He died because he died, that’s all.”
Then M. Daron, in a voice full of emotion, demanded: “Exactly how old was that one? I can’t remember.”
“Eighty-nine.”
And the little old man, with an air at once incredulous and reassured, cried, “Eighty-nine! So it wasn’t old age! …”
A Parricide
Counsel for the defence had pleaded insanity. How else was this strange crime to be accounted for?
One morning, in the reeds near Chaton, two bodies had been found locked in each other’s arms, those of a man and his wife. They were a couple well known in society, wealthy, no longer young, and only married the previous year, the woman having lost her first husband three years before.
They were not known to have any enemies, and they had not been robbed. They had apparently been thrown into the river from the bank, after having been struck, one after the other, with a long iron spike.
The inquest did not lead to any discovery. The watermen who were questioned knew nothing; the affair was on the point of being abandoned, when a young joiner from a neighbouring village, named Georges Louis, known as The Gentleman, gave himself up.
To all interrogation he refused to make any other answer than:
“I had known the man for two years, the woman for six months. They often came to me to have old furniture mended, because I am good at the work.”
And when he was asked: “Why did you kill them?” he would reply obstinately:
“I killed them because I wanted to kill them.”
Nothing more could be got out of him.
The man was doubtless an illegitimate child, formerly put out to nurse in the district and afterwards abandoned. He had no name except Georges Louis, but since, as he grew up, he had shown himself unusually intelligent, with tastes and a natural delicacy quite foreign to his comrades, he had been nicknamed “The Gentleman,” and was never called anything else. He was known to be remarkably clever as a joiner, the profession he had adopted. He even did a little carving in wood. He was also said to have ideas about his station, to be a follower of communistic doctrines, even of nihilism, a great reader of novels of adventure and bloodthirsty romances, an influential elector and a clever speaker at the workingmen’s or peasants’ debating-club.
Counsel for the defence had pleaded insanity.
How, in truth, could it be supposed that this workman should have killed his best clients, clients who were both rich and generous (he admitted this), who in two years had given him work which had brought in three thousand francs (his books testified to it)? There was only one explanation: insanity, the obsession of a man who has slipped out of his class and avenges himself on society as a whole by the murder of two gentlefolk; and counsel made a neat allusion to his nickname of “The Gentleman,” given to this outcast by the whole neighbourhood.
“Consider the irony of the situation!” he exclaimed. “Was it not capable of still more
