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crime, supposing them still resident in Paris, would naturally have been
stricken with terror at the public attention thus acutely directed into
the proper channel; and, in certain classes of minds, there would have
arisen, at once, a sense of the necessity of some exertion to redivert
this attention. And thus, the thicket of the Barrière du Roule having
been already suspected, the idea of placing the articles where they were
found, might have been naturally entertained. There is no real evidence,
although Le Soleil so supposes, that the articles discovered had
been more than a very few days in the thicket; while there is much
circumstantial proof that they could not have remained there, without
attracting attention, during the twenty days elapsing between the fatal
Sunday and the afternoon upon which they were found by the boys. 'They
were all mildewed down hard,' says Le Soleil, adopting the opinions of
its predecessors, 'with the action of the rain, and stuck together from
mildew. The grass had grown around and over some of them. The silk of
the parasol was strong, but the threads of it were run together within.
The upper part, where it bad been doubled and folded, was all mildewed
and rotten, and tore on being opened.' In respect to the grass having
'.grown around and over some of them,' it is obvious that the fact
could only have been ascertained from the words, and thus from the
recollections, of two small boys; for these boys removed the articles
and took them home before they had been seen by a third party. But grass
will grow, especially in warm and damp weather, (such as was that of the
period of the murder,) as much as two or three inches in a single day.
A parasol lying upon a newly turfed ground, might, in a single week,
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