After drinking more heavily than usual one evening, he had quarrelled with his brother, and killed him by a blow on the head with an iron bar. Lacheneur’s blood was being visited on his betrayer’s children. Chupin was tried, condemned to twenty year’s hard labour, and sent to Brest. But this sentence afforded the duchess no relief. The culprit had written to her from his Paris prison; and he found the means to write to her from Brest. He confided his letters to comrades, whose terms of imprisonment had expired, and who came to the Hotel de Sairmeuse demanding an interview with the duchess. And she received them. They told her all the miseries they had endured “out there;” and usually ended by requesting some slight assistance. One morning, a man whose desperate manner quite frightened her, brought the duchess this laconic note. “I am tired of starving here; I wish to make my escape. Come to Brest; you can visit the prison, and we will decide on some plan. If you refuse to do this, I shall apply to the duke, who will obtain my pardon in exchange for what I will tell him.” Blanche was dumb with horror. It was impossible, she thought, to sink lower than this. “Well!” said the returned convict, harshly. “What answer shall I take to my comrade?” “I will go--tell him I will go!” she said, driven to desperation. And in fact she made the journey, and visited the prison, but without finding Chupin. There had been a revolt the previous week, the troops had fired on the prisoners, and Chupin had been killed. Still the duchess dared not rejoice, for she feared that her tormentor had told his wife the secret of his power. Indeed the widow--the Aspasie Clapard already mentioned, promptly made her appearance at the house in the Rue de Grenelle; but her manner was humble and supplicating. She had often heard her dear dead husband say that madame was his benefactress, and now she came to beg a little aid to enable her to open a small wine-shop. Her son Polyte--ah! such a good son! just eighteen years old, and such a help to his poor mother--had found a little house in a good situation for business, and if they only had three or four hundred francs---- Blanche cut the story short by handing her supplicant a five hundred franc note. “Either that woman’s humility is a mask,” thought the duchess, “or her husband has told her nothing.” Five days later Polyte Chupin presented himself. They needed three hundred francs more before they could commence business, he said, and he came on behalf of his mother to entreat the kind lady to advance them that amount. But being determined to discover exactly how she was situated, with regard to the widow, the duchess curtly refused, and the young fellow went off without a word. Evidently the mother and son were ignorant of the facts. Chupin’s secret had died with him.