"You were in hospital. When you came back, did Helene take good care of you?" "She gave me bouillon every morning to build me up." "The bouillon she gave you did you no harm?" "On the contrary, it did me a lot of good." "Wasn't the accused jealous of Perrotte--that good-looking girl who gave you so much of her favour?" "In her life Perrotte was a good girl. She never was out of sorts for a moment--never rubbed one the wrong way." "Didn't Helene say to you that Perrotte would never recover?" "Yes, she said that. 'She's a lost woman,' she said; 'the doctors are going the wrong way with the disease.' "All the same," Andre went on, "Helene never ate with us. She worked night and day, but ate in secret, I believe. Anyhow, a friend of mine told me he'd once seen her eating a crust of bread, and chewing some other sort of food at the same time. As for me--I don't know; but I don't think you can live without eating." "I couldn't keep down what I ate," Helene interposed. "I took some bouillon here and there; sometimes a mouthful of bread--nothing in secret. I never thought of Andre in marriage--not him more than another. That was all a joke." A number of witnesses, friends of Perrotte, who had seen her during her illness, spoke of the extreme dislike the girl had shown for Helene and for the liquids the latter prepared for her. Perrotte would say to Helene, "But you're dirty, you ugly Bretonne!" Perrotte had a horror of bouillon: "Ah--these vegetable soups! I've had enough of them! It was what Helene gave me that night that made me ill!" The witnesses did not understand all this, because the accused seemed to be very good to her fellow-servant. At the bedside Helene cried, "Ah! What can I do that will save you, my poor Perrotte?" When Perrotte was dying she wanted to ask Helene's pardon. Embracing the dying girl, the accused replied, "Ah! There's no need for that, my poor Perrotte. I know you didn't mean anything." A witness telling of soup Helene had made for Perrotte, which the girl declared to have been poisoned, it was asked what happened to the remainder of it. The President passed the question to Helene, who said she had thrown it into the hearth. IV The most complete and important testimony in the trial was given by M. Theophile Bidard, professor to the law faculty of Rennes. The facts he had to bring forward, he said, had taken no significance in his mind until the last of them transpired. He would have to go back into the past to trace them in their proper order. He recalled the admission of Helene to his domestic staff and the good recommendations on which he had engaged her. From the first Helene proved herself to have plenty of intelligence, and he had believed that her intelligence was combined with goodness of heart. This was because he had heard that by her work she was supporting two small children, as well as her poor old mother, who had no other means of sustenance.