One day, during the second week in March, M. Denizet, the examining-magistrate², had again summoned certain important witnesses in the Grandmorin case, to his chambers³ at the Rouen Law Courts.

For the last three weeks, this case had been causing enormous sensation. It had set Rouen upside down; it had impassioned Paris; and the opposition⁵ newspapers, in their violent campaign against the Empire, had just grasped it as a weapon. The forthcoming general elections, which occupied the public mind in preference to all other political events, added keen excitement to the struggle. In the Chamber⁴ there had been some very stormy sittings; one at which the validity of the powers of two members attached to the Emperor's household, had been bitterly disputed; and another that had given rise to a most determined⁶ attack on the financial administration of the Prefect of the Seine, coupled with a demand for the election of a Municipal Council.

The Grandmorin case, coming at an appropriate moment, served to keep up the agitation⁸. The most extraordinary stories were abroad. Every morning, the newspapers were full of assumptions injurious for the Government. On the one hand, the public were given to understand that the victim—a familiar figure at the Tuileries, formerly⁹ on the bench, Commander of the Legion of Honour, immensely rich—was addicted¹⁰ to the most frightful¹¹ debauchery; on the[Pg 96] other, the inquiry¹² into the case, having so far proved fruitless, they began to accuse the police and legal authorities, of

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