A month passed, and great tranquillity¹ again pervaded² the lodging³ occupied by the Roubauds, on the first floor of the railway station, over the waiting-rooms. With them, with their neighbours in the corridor, with all this little crowd of public servants subjected to an existence regulated by the clock, life had resumed its monotony. And it seemed as if nothing violent or abnormal had taken place.

The noisy and scandalous Grandmorin case was quietly being forgotten, was about to be shelved, owing to the apparent inability of the authorities to discover the criminal. After Cabuche had been locked up a fortnight, the examining-magistrate, Denizet, had ordered his discharge, on the ground that there was not sufficient evidence against him. And a romantic fable⁴ was now being arranged by the police: that of an unknown murderer on whom it was impossible to lay hands, a criminal adventurer, who was everywhere at the same time, who was accused of all the murders, and who vanished in smoke, at the mere⁵ sight of the officers.

It was now only at long intervals⁶ that a few jokes about this fabulous⁷ murderer were revived in the opposition⁸ press, which became intensely excited as the general elections drew near. The pressure of the government, the violence of the prefects, every day furnished other subjects for indignant articles; and the newspapers were so busy with these matters that they gave no further attention to the case. It had ceased to interest the public, who no longer even spoke⁹ on the subject.

[Pg 169]

What had completed the tranquillity of the Roubauds was the happy way in which the other difficulty, connected with the will of President Grandmorin, had been smoothed over.

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