THE NEWS OF Laure Richis’s murder spread through the region of Grasse as fast as if the message had been “The king is dead!” or “War’s been declared!” or “Pirates have landed on the coast!”-and the awful sense of terror it triggered was similar as well. All at once the fear that they had so carefully forgotten was back again, as virulent as it had been last autumn and with all the accompanying phenomena: panic, outrage, anger, hysterical suspicions, desperation. People stayed in their houses at night, locked up their daughters, barricaded themselves in, mistrusted one another, and slept no more. Everyone assumed it would continue this time as it had before, a murder a week. The calendar seemed to have been set back six months.

The dread was more paralyzing, however, than six months earlier, for people felt helpless at the sudden return of a danger that they had thought well behind them. If even the bishop’s anathema had proved useless! If even Antoine Richis, the great Richis, the richest man in town, the second consul, a powerful, prudent man who had every kind of assistance available, if even he could not protect his child! If the murderer’s hand was not be deterred even by the hallowed beauty of Laure-for indeed she seemed a saint to everyone who had known her, especially now, afterwards, now that she was dead-what hope was there of escaping this murderer? He was more cruel than the plague, for you could flee before the plague, but not before this murderer, as the case of Richis had proved. Apparently he possessed supernatural powers. He was most certainly in league with the devil, if he was not tue devil himself. And so many people, especially the simpler souls, knew no better course than to go to church and pray, every tradesman to his patron: the locksmiths to St. Aloysius, the weavers to St. Crispin, the gardeners to St. Anthony, the perfumers to St. Joseph. And they took their wives and daughters with them, praying together, eating and sleeping in the church; they did not leave during the day themselves now, convinced that the only possible refuge from this monster-if any refuge was to be had-was under the protection of the despairing parish and the gaze of the Madonna.

Seeing that the church had failed once already, other, quicker wits banded together in occult groups. Hiring at great expense a certified witch from Gour-don, they crept into one of the many limestone grottoes of subterranean Grasse and celebrated black masses to curry the Old Gentleman’s favor. Still others, in particular members of the upper middle class and the educated nobility, put their money on the most modern scientific methods, magnetizing their houses, hypnotizing their daughters, gathering in their salons for secret fluidal meetings, and employing telepathy to drive off the murderer’s spirit with communal thought emissions. The guilds organized a penitential procession from Grasse to La Napoule and back. The monks from the town’s five monasteries established services of perpetual prayer and ceaseless chants, so that soon unbroken lamentation was heard day and night, now on one street comer, now on another. Hardly anyone worked.

Thus, with feverish passivity and something very like impatience, the people of Grasse awaited the murderer’s next blow. No one doubted that it would fall. And secretly everyone yearned to hear the horrible news, if only in the hope that it would not be about him, but someone else.

This time, however, the civil, regional, and provincial authorities did not allow themselves to be infected by the hysterical mood of the citizenry. For the first time since the murderer of maidens had appeared on the scene, well-planned and effective cooperative efforts were instituted among the prefectures of Grasse, Draguignan, and Toulon, among magistrates, police, commissaries, parliament, and the navy.

This cooperation among the powerful arose partly from fear of a general civil uprising, partly from the fact that only since Laure Richis’s murder did they have clues that made systematic pursuit of the murderer possible............