“I did not know that a girl could marry in that way,” said Madame Graslin; “but how is it that in a town like this, where all things are known, and where everybody sees everything that happens to his neighbor, not the slightest clue to this woman has been obtained? In order to love, persons must see each other and consequently be seen. What do you really think, you magistrates?” she added, plunging a fixed look into the eyes of the _procureur-general_. “We think that the woman belongs to the bourgeois or the commercial class.” “I don’t agree with you,” said Madame Graslin. “A woman of that class does not have elevated sentiments.” This reply drew all eyes on Veronique, and the whole company waited for an explanation of so paradoxical a speech. “During the hours I lie awake at night I have not been able to keep my mind from dwelling on this mysterious affair,” she said slowly, “and I think I have fathomed Tascheron’s motive. I believe the person he loves is a young girl, because a married woman has interests, if not feelings, which partly fill her heart and prevent her from yielding so completely to a great passion as to leave her home. There is such a thing as a love proceeding from passion which is half maternal, and to me it is evident that this man was loved by a woman who wished to be his prop, his Providence. She must have put into her passion something of the genius that inspires the work of artists and poets, the creative force which exists in woman under another form; for it is her mission to create men, not things. Our works are our children; our children are the pictures, books, and statues of our lives. Are we not artists in their earliest education? I say that this unknown woman, if she is not a young girl, has never been a mother but is filled with the maternal instinct; she has loved this man to form him, to develop him. It needs a feminine element in you men of law to detect these shades of motive, which too often escape you. If I had been your deputy,” she said, looking straight at the _procureur-general_, “I should have found the guilty woman, if indeed there is any guilt about it. I agree with the Abbe Dutheil that these lovers meant to fly to America with the money of old Pingret. The theft led to the murder by the fatal logic which the punishment of death inspires. And so,” she added with an appealing look at Monsieur de Grandville, “I think it would be merciful in you to abandon the theory of premeditation, for in so doing you would save the man’s life. He is evidently a fine man in spite of his crime; he might, perhaps, repair that crime by a great repentance if you gave him time. The works of repentance ought to count for something in the judgment of the law. In these days is there nothing better for a human being to do than to give his life, or build, as in former times, a cathedral of Milan, to expiate his crimes?”