Turin

Turin is the destination at the center of Dubois’s proposed flight after a planned robbery in Grenoble. It figures in the episode not as a place Therese reaches, but as the endpoint of Dubois’s escape: the route makes visible the contrast between the criminal’s successful flight and Therese’s return to hardship.

Turin as the Intended Destination

Dubois tells Therese that, after stealing the fortune kept by Dubreuil, she will arrange for his belongings to reach Turin before she leaves Grenoble. Therese is to accompany her, and Dubois offers a thousand louis upon their arrival in Piedmont. Turin thus gives the proposed theft a concrete destination and makes the offer of payment part of a larger plan to leave the scene of the crime.

Therese pretends to accept the arrangement, while intending to warn Dubreuil. Her apparent consent lets Dubois believe that Therese will help keep the young tradesman away while the theft is carried out. The Turin plan therefore depends on concealment: Dubois expects to flee with the proceeds while Therese helps divert suspicion.

The Flight from Grenoble

The plan does not unfold as Dubois describes it. Therese warns Dubreuil, who offers to marry her and take her with him to Geneva, but Dubois poisons him and leaves Grenoble. After Dubreuil’s associate reports that she has gone, Therese learns that Dubois has also forced open her armoire and taken the little money and possessions she had.

The narrative identifies Turin as the direction of Dubois’s departure. This detail links her earlier promise to a real escape route, while distinguishing her departure from the journey Therese had been asked to undertake. The stolen fortune and the offered reward do not secure Therese’s passage: Dubois leaves her behind, and the loss of her own belongings returns her to the poverty from which Dubreuil had seemed ready to rescue her.

Narrative Significance

Turin functions as a practical marker of Dubois’s mobility and of the unequal consequences of the episode. Dubois can convert a projected robbery into flight toward another city; Therese, despite trying to prevent the crime, is left with the consequences of the poisoning, Dubreuil’s death, and the theft of her possessions. The promised destination consequently sharpens the episode’s reversal: the prospect of escape and material relief is attached to Dubois’s plan, while Therese’s attempt to act conscientiously ends in renewed destitution.