The prosecution certainly made out a strong case against Marie Lafarge. The jewels, it was stated, were first missed after a discussion between the two ladies on the difference between paste and real stones. At first Madame de Leautaud made little of her loss. She was careless of her things, and thought her husband or her mother had hidden her jewels somewhere to give her a fright. But they both denied having played her any such trick, and as the jewels were undoubtedly gone, the police were informed, and many of the servants suspected. Suspicion against Madame Lafarge had always rankled in Madame de Leautaud's mind, and it was soon strengthened by her strange antics with regard to the jewels. On one occasion she defended a servant who had been suspected, promising to find him a place if he were dismissed, as she knew he was innocent. One of her servants told the de Leautauds that her mistress said laughingly she had stolen the jewels and swallowed them. Again, Madame Lafarge had submitted to be mesmerised by Madame de Montbreton, Madame de Leautaud's sister, and had fallen into an evidently simulated magnetic trance; when, being questioned about the missing jewels, she said they had been removed by a Jew, who had sold them. Other circumstances were adduced as strongly indicating Marie's guilt. It was observed in Paris, before her marriage, that she had a quantity of fine stones, loose, and she explained that they had been given her at Busagny. Once after her marriage M. Lafarge had asked her for a diamond to cut a pane of glass, and, to his surprise, she produced a number, saying she had owned them from childhood, but that they had only been handed over to her lately by an old servant. These contradictory explanations told greatly against Madame Lafarge. She made other statements also that were at variance. When first taxed with the theft she pretended that the diamonds had been sent her by an uncle in Toulouse, whose name and address she was, however, unable to give. Next she brought up the story contained in her appealing letter to Madame de Leautaud. It was the story of the young man, Félix Clavé, son of a schoolmaster, with whom the girls had made acquaintance. Having frequently met him when attending mass, they rashly wrote him an anonymous letter, giving him a rendezvous in the garden of the Tuileries. Marie Lafarge declared that the encouragement came from Madame de Leautaud, which the latter denied, and retorted that it was Marie Lafarge who had been the object of the young man's devotion.