“Objection of Lachaussee, who asserts that for seven years he was in the
service of the deceased; that he had given into his charge, two years
earlier, 100 pistoles and 200 white crowns, which should be found in a
cloth bag under the closet window, and in the same a paper stating that
the said sum belonged to him, together with the transfer of 300 livres
owed to him by the late M. d’Aubray, councillor; the said transfer made
by him at Laserre, together with three receipts from his master of
apprenticeship, 100 livres each: these moneys and papers he claims.”
To Lachaussee the reply was given that he must wait till the day when
the seals were broken, and then if all was as he said, his property
would be returned.
But Lachaussee was not the only person who was agitated about the death
of Sainte-Croix. The, marquise, who was familiar with all the secrets of
this fatal closet, had hurried to the commissary as 2496 soon as she
heard of the event, and although it was ten o’clock at night had
demanded to speak with him. But he had replied by his head clerk, Pierre
Frater, that he was in bed; the marquise insisted, begging them to rouse
him up, for she wanted a box that she could not allow to have opened.
The clerk then went up to the Sieur Picard’s bedroom, but came back
saying that what the marquise demanded was for the time being an
impossibility, for the commissary was asleep. She saw that it was idle
to insist, and went away, saying that she should send a man the next
morning to fetch the box. In the morning the man came, offering fifty
Louis to the commissary on behalf of the marquise, if he would give her
the box. But he replied that the box was in the sealed room, that it
would have to be opened, and that if the objects claimed by the marquise
were really hers, they would be safely handed over to her. This reply
struck the marquise like a thunderbolt. There was no time to be lost:
hastily she removed from the rue Neuve-Saint-Paul, where her town house
was, to Picpus, her country place. Thence she posted the same evening to
Liege, arriving the next morning, and retired to a convent.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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