Causes Cettbres.

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found wide open, and carried the key to his "Some one should be sent for a physician," room. Early the next morning he went out said one of the servants. into the country. He had to buy provisions "It is not that," murmured Lebrun; " it for the supper that evening, and to go to the is something worse. There has been some butchers at Vallee. He met on the way a crime committed. I am very much disturbed bookseller of his acquaintance, with whom, on account of the gate which I found open as he himself said, he "gossiped." He last night." was merry, even a little jovial. The locksmith arrived, and the door was Returning to the house, he met near the opened. Lebrun entered the room first and door three friends, whom he made come ran to the bed of Madame Mazel, tore aside into the kitchen. He was in so frolicsome the curtains, and cried, " Madame has been a humor that having removed his cloak he assassinated! " Then he entered the bath threw it playfully over the shoulders of one of room, unfastened the bar of the window, and the new-comers, and seizing a leg of mutton threw open the blinds to admit the light, and pretended to strike, saying, " I have the right disclosed the body of Madame Mazel lying to beat my own cloak as much as I please." upon her bed, dead, bathed in blood. Her He then looked after the preparations for face, her neck, and her hands were covered the supper, and sent one of the lackeys with with wounds. some wood for his mistress's chamber. Lebrun's first thought was that his mis Eight o'clock struck, and Madame Mazel had tress had been murdered by a robber. He not rung for her servant. Lebrun noted ran to the strong box and examined it. The this and was troubled, for she usually arose lock was intact. " She has not been robbed," at seven. He waited uneasily some minutes he said. " Why was it done?" for her bell to ring. Then he went out hur Rene de Savonnieres sent at once for a riedly, and going to his house gave his wife magistrate and two physicians to come and seven louis and some half-crowns to keep, view the body of his mother. These last as he did not wish to carry them in his found fifty wounds upon the victim, made pocket. He said to her as he started to probably by a knife. No one of these return, " Madame has not yet awaked; I do wounds was of itself mortal; death had re not know what to think of it." sulted from the great loss of blood. She On reaching Madame Mazel's house he must have had the power to resist and to found the servants seriously alarmed at the cry for aid. silence of their mistress. He resolved to go. The magistrate found in the bed a piece up to her room. He mounted the stairs and of a cravat, with embroidered ends, stained knocked at the different doors of the cham with blood, and a napkin rolled up in the ber, calling, " Madame Mazel!" shape of a cap which still preserved the form No response; his alarm increased. of the head on which it had been worn. "Can she have had an apoplectic stroke? " This napkin, all covered with blood, had said one of the men. upon it the mark of Madame Mazel. It was "I fear it may be something worse," said inferred that during her struggle with the Lebrun. " I feel very uneasy since I found assassin she had torn his cravat and snatched the portc-cochbre wide open last night." off the cap which he wore. M. Rene Savonnieres was at once notified. Between the mutilated fingers of the dead He arrived, and knocked at the door of his woman were found some hairs which resem mother's chamber without eliciting a reply. bled in no respect those of Madame Mazel, He then sent for a locksmith to open the and which had evidently been torn from the door. " What can it be? " said he to Lebrun. head of the murderer. "She may have had apoplexy." An examination of the room and the ad 29