On her side the widow was quite friendly toward her homely admirer. She refused to marry him, as he would have wished, but she did her best without success to marry him to others of her acquaintance. Neither a sempstress nor an inferior actress could she persuade, for all her zeal, to unite themselves with a hand in an oil mill, a widower with two children. It is typical of the widow's nervous energy that she should have undertaken so hopeless a task. In the meantime she made use of her admirer. On Sundays he helped her in her apartment, carried coals, bottled wine, scrubbed the floors, and made himself generally useful. He was supposed by those about the house to be her brother. Occasionally, in the absence of a maid, the widow allowed him to attend on her personally, even to assist her in her toilette and perform for her such offices as one woman would perform for another. The man soon came to be madly in love with the woman; his passion, excited but not gratified, enslaved and consumed him. To some of his fellow-workmen who saw him moody and preoccupied, he confessed that he ardently desired to marry a friend of his childhood, not a working woman but a lady. Such was the situation and state of mind of Nathalis Gaudry when, in November, 1876, he received a letter from the widow, in which she wrote, "Come at once. I want you on a matter of business. Tell your employer it is a family affair; I will make up your wages." In obedience to this message Gaudry was absent from the distillery from the 17th to the 23rd of November. The "matter of business" about which the widow wished to consult with Gaudry turned out to be a scheme of revenge. She told him that she had been basely defrauded by a man to whom she had entrusted money. She desired to be revenged on him, and could think of no better way than to strike at his dearest affections by seriously injuring his son. This she proposed to do with the help of a knuckle-duster, which she produced and gave to Gaudry. Armed with this formidable weapon, Gaudry was to strike her enemy's son so forcibly in the pit of the stomach as to disable him for life. The widow offered to point out to Gaudry the young man whom he was to attack. She took him outside the young man's club and showed him his victim. He was Georges de Saint Pierre.