In the old days, many people in France believed in Catholicism and had many children, which led to the remarkable situation of a thirty-year-old young man having a twenty-year-old female cousin.
Generally, when choosing someone to take charge, they picked someone respected or elderly. Those who could represent a victim's family at a young age were usually educated or "had seen the world." The agitated young man looked refined, as if he had received an education. Such educated people often felt ashamed of the Church, superstition, and the dark Middle Ages.
There were many reasons for a young girl's death: an accident, heartbreak, or a moment of despair that led her to take her own life. But Elizabeth, the girl who had caused this incident, had died of tuberculosis.
The cemetery had been poorly managed for the same reason. The townspeople buried there had all died of virulent infectious diseases. Later, nameless people and suicides were buried there as well, and it gradually became something like a mass grave.
Elizabeth had been buried in late autumn. Her mother had not yet grown accustomed to life without her daughter and occasionally visited the cemetery. Later, she discovered that Elizabeth's grave had been dug up and the body inside had vanished without a trace.
The old woman did not think her daughter had come back to life. Her first thought was of the British living in the neighboring military camp. Instinctively, she believed these outsiders must have done it.
The agitated crowd forgot that they could report the matter to the police. Besides, most French people did not believe the police served them. Georgiana, the "favorite consort," was British—why would those in power seek justice for them? Thus came the scene of the townspeople trying to storm the British settlement and search