A year before the revolution, one day in 1847, at dawn, the servants of the Sébastiani Hotel discover the body of their mistress brutally stabbed. The police investigate immediately. Who could have committed this crime and what motives led the assassin to such violence? The case takes on worrying proportions, as the victim's husband, a peer of France, is implicated. Did the Duke of Praslin really murder his wife? Why, when everything accuses him, does he persist in denying the crime? What role did the Duke's governess, Henriette Deluzy, play in this tragedy? Was the victim an unbalanced woman or a tyrannized mother?
—Guy Bellinger