She had been awakened at midnight by a soft knocking at her door, and had recognised the voice of Olivier, imploring her to get up at once, as her father lay dying. She sprang up, terrified, and opened the door. Olivier, pale, strained and bathed in perspiration, led the way, with tottering steps, to the workshop; she followed. There was her father lying with his eyes glazed, and the death-rattle in his throat. She threw herself upon him, weeping wildly, and then observed that his shirt was covered with blood. Olivier gently lifted her away, and busied himself in bathing a wound on her father’s left breast with balsam, and bandaging it. As he was doing so, her father’s consciousness came back; the rattle in his throat ceased and, looking first on her and then on Olivier with most expressive glances, he took her hand and placed it in Olivier’s, pressing them both together. The pair of them were kneeling beside her father’s bed when he raised himself with a piercing cry, but immediately fell back again, and with a deep sigh departed this life. On this they both wept and lamented.
Olivier told her how her father had been murdered in his presence during an expedition on which he had accompanied him that night by his order, and how he had with the utmost difficulty carried him home, not supposing him to be mortally wounded. As soon as it was day, the people of the house—who had heard the sounds of their footsteps and of the weeping and lamenting during the night—came up, and found them still kneeling, inconsolable by the goldsmith’s body. Then an uproar began, the Marechaussée broke in, and Olivier was taken to prison as her father’s murderer. Madelon added the most touching account of Olivier’s virtues, goodness, piety and sincerity, telling how he had honoured his master as if he had been his own father, and how the latter returned his affection in the fullest measure, choosing him for his son-in-law in spite of his poverty, because his skill and fidelity were equal to the nobility of his heart. All this Madelon saw out of the fulness of her love, and added that if Olivier had thrust a dagger into her father’s heart before her very eyes, she would rather have thought it a delusion of Satan’s than have believed Olivier capable of such a terrible crime.
Most deeply touched by Madelon’s unspeakable sufferings, and quite disposed to believe in poor Olivier’s innocence, Mademoiselle de Scudéri made inquiries, and found everything confirmed which Madelon had said as to the domestic relations between the master and his workman. The people of the house and the neighbours all spoke of Olivier as the very model of good, steady, exemplary behaviour. No one knew anything whatever against him, and yet, when the crime was alluded to, every one shrugged his shoulders, and thought there was something incomprehensible about it.
Olivier, brought before the Chambre Ardente, most steadfastly denied—as Mademoiselle de Scudéri learned—the crime of which he was accused, and maintained that his master had been attacked in the street in his presence, and borne down, and that he had carried him home still alive, although he did not long survive. This agreed with Madelon’s statement.
Over and over again Mademoiselle de Scudéri had the very minutest circumstances of the awful event related to her. She specially inquired if there had ever been any quarrel between Olivier and the father, whether Olivier was altogether exempt from that propensity to hastiness which often attacks the best tempered people like a blind madness, and leads them to commit deeds which seem to exclude all freewill; but the more enthusiastically Madelon spoke of the peaceful home-life which the three had led together, united in the most sincere affection, the more did every vestige of suspicion against Olivier disappear from her mind. Closely examining and considering everything, starting from the assumption that, notwithstanding all that spoke so loudly for his innocence, Olivier yet had been Cardillac’s murderer, Mademoiselle de Scudéri could find, in all the realm of possibility, no motive for the terrible deed, which, in any case, was bound to destroy his happiness. Poor though skilful, he succeeds in gaining the good will of the most renowned of masters; he loves the daughter—his master favours his love. Happiness, good fortune for the rest of his life are laid open before him. Supposing, then, that—God knows on what impulse—in an outburst of anger, he should have made this murderous attack on his master, what diabolical hypocrisy it required to behave as he had done after the deed! With the firmest conviction of his innocence, Mademoiselle de Scudéri resolved to save Olivier at whatever cost.