My Memoirs Part 45

"I was made to write those two last letters about one and a half or two hours after my first letter. It was in any case after M. Sauerwein had returned with the so-called fragments of my first letter.

"When I had written the two other letters, I was told that as M.

Bunau-Varilla had left the offices of the _Matin_, they would be able to restore them to me only in the morning, and that, meanwhile, M.

Sauerwein would keep them in his pocket-book.

"The next morning, during the 'scene' I went to make at the _Matin_ office, I claimed from M. Sauerwein the two letters, but he refused to restore them to me. M. Sauerwein said: 'They won't be published, but I want to keep them.' I declared to M. Sauerwein that I was going to demand their rest.i.tution through a bailiff. He retorted: 'That will have no other result than having the two letters authenticated.'

"I a.s.sert in the most absolute manner that Mme. Steinheil never entrusted me with any letter or mission, no more for M. Leydet than for any one else.

"Besides, at the time of my release--December 28th, 1908--I had not met Mme. Steinheil, in the corridor, for several days, and when on December 28th, after my acquittal, I had to go back to Saint-Lazare for the various formalities in connection with my departure from prison, I was not taken to my cell, but waited downstairs, in the office, where my belongings were brought to me. It would therefore have been impossible for Mme. Steinheil to have given me any letter or to have asked me to do anything for her.

"The letter published by the _Matin_ on January 22nd alludes to a M.

Boune, who takes his meals in the same restaurant as myself. Talking to me there, he advised me, as a matter of elementary prudence, not to mix myself up in any way with the Steinheil Affair.... These days, several journalists and barristers have given me at the restaurant the same advice as M. Boune. It is probably to this that the _Matin_ of to-day alludes when it mentions 'pressure.' It is most likely that there are now reporters of the _Matin_ constantly at that restaurant, and that they watch everything I do.

"(Signed) GHIRELLI.

REDMOND, Clerk.

ANDRe, Judge."

(_Dossier_ Cote 3029)

This retraction was complete, absolute, but the harm had been done, alas, and the public believed all these dreadful lies published in the _Matin_ and attributed to Ghirelli. Besides, who heard of the retraction, except the judge... and I, months afterwards, when the Dossier was handed to my counsel and me?

And now, for the sake of the truth, I will quote from the evidences given by "M. Sauerwein, Charles, 32 years old, journalist"... to M.

Andre, the examining magistrate, on February 4, 1909:

... "I wish to specify the conditions on which we obtained those interviews (with Alba Ghirelli). At the end of December 1908... we discovered the address of Ghirelli. She was very annoyed when we called on her, and said that before making any statements she wished to consult a few friends. She promised to call on me the next day at the _Matin_. I received an express letter from her, and joined her at the Restaurant de la Feria. I was accompanied by another member of the _Matin_ staff. A first interview took place, which appeared in the _Matin_ dated January 14th. This interview was entirely written under her dictation, and she signed it.... It concerned the statements made by Mme. Steinheil and collected by Ghirelli, about the guilt of Alexandra Wolff, the pearl placed first in M. Chabrier's pocket-book, but taken away from it after Mme. Chabrier's violent interventions, and about the 'necessary'

suicide.

"The next day we gathered from Ghirelli a few other details about the visit of Pastor Arboux and plans for the future made by Mme. Steinheil.

This second interview appeared in the _Matin_ on January 16th.

"Between the first and the second interviews, Ghirelli told us that on the eve of the day when she was to appear before the Court of Appeal, where she thought she would be acquitted, Mme. Steinheil had given her two letters, one for Mme. Prevost, the other for a magistrate, and had asked her to telephone to one of her former friends. We have never mentioned the last two facts in our articles, but the Prevost story interested us. Ghirelli begged us not to attribute to her the revelation of the Prevost affair....

... (On January 19th) "When Ghirelli left your rooms, one of our reporters accompanied her to the cafe Ducastaing... where she was joined by many journalists... thereupon one of our colleagues brought a note (the source of which I ignore) that Ghirelli had confirmed certain of the details published by us, but had denied two or three of the other points, and particularly the letter taken to Mme. Prevost.

"I was there. I told Ghirelli that in the face of those official denials we were simply going to publish the note brought by the colleague I have mentioned. She begged me to remain with her and to send for a third party, whose name I cannot give on account of 'professional secrecy.' I summoned the third party on the telephone. We were to have dinner at Maire's, the 'Countess' (Ghirelli), one of her lady friends called 'La Generale,' and I. The dinner was not altogether pleasant, for I was in the presence of a person who had just denied what she had stated on the previous day. The third person arrived.

("Personally, I have no doubt that he was M. Camille Dreyfus, Rosselli's counsel, to whose 'indiscretion' the Director of Saint-Lazare alluded in his report of January 21st, 1909 [_Dossier_ Cote 3021]).

"The third person had a long chat with the 'Countess' in the next room.

I was sent for, and the third person told me that the 'Countess' had a confession to make to me. She then declared: 'All that I have told you from the very first moment, and that you have published, is false, and is due to my imagination, except the details I confirmed before the examining magistrate.' I told the 'Countess' how much I regretted that she should have so sought her pleasure in lying, and she said that the _Matin_ would publish the next day the note which I have mentioned to you.

"I was about to leave, but the 'Countess' detained me. The third person had just gone, and the 'Countess' said: 'I swear to you on the head of my children that all of what I have told you from the first to the last, is the exact truth. If I have denied it, it is because eight or nine persons whom I didn't know before have influenced me, intimidated me.

People have gone so far as to tell me that they would have me arrested!'...

"... Whilst the 'Countess' made to me, in private, the statements I have just repeated, the third person was waiting in the pa.s.sage. I joined him, and told him what had happened.... He then left me and went back to the 'Countess,' whilst I went to the _Matin_ and at once related all these incidents to the Editor. Five minutes later, the 'Countess' and the third person arrived at the _Matin_. In the presence of my colleague, M. Bourse, Ghirelli repeated that she had spoken the truth and that she hid part of the truth from you only because of the pressure put upon her. I said to her: 'Your word has no longer any value for me.

You must write down what you say and sign it!' The 'Countess' showed some hesitation.

"I must tell you that on the very day when she gave us the interview which we published, I paid her 500 francs (20) as a reward, and I promised her further sums of money--thinking of handing her--little by little, 2000 francs (80) if the information which she might be able to supply, seemed interesting to us.

"Besides, I had it in my mind that the 80 were also to represent the price of her Memoirs....

"To return to our conversation with the 'Countess' on January 19th...

She suggested a doc.u.ment according to her ideas, but written by me, and merely dated and signed by her. I said I wanted the doc.u.ment to be written by her.... She consented, and wrote exactly four doc.u.ments without being dictated to, but on lines that we suggested. (She thought them in accordance with the truth.) The first was published in facsimile in the _Matin_ on January 20th; the second refers to the letter taken by the 'Countess' to a magistrate; the third tells the fact that Rosselli was beseeched by Mme. Steinheil not to repeat to the examining magistrate the revelations she might have made, and the fourth concerning the intimidations to which 'Countess' Ghirelli was submitted by various persons. We published this last letter too. When all was written and signed by her, she asked me for the rest of the 80, and I told her to come the next morning. She came... and asked me for the money. I consulted the Director of the _Matin_, and, returning to Ghirelli, I said to her: 'Madame, so long as you are a witness in the Affair, the _Matin_ won't pay you anything, for I don't want it to be said that the _Matin_ gave money to a witness in the Affair, so that she would confirm what she had said before...'

"Furious, she asked me to return her the ma.n.u.script of her Memoirs. The same evening she telephoned... and asked me to dine with her. I accepted... M. Bourse and M. Vallier were with me. She remained with one of the two others till 10.30 P.M., and afterwards went to the offices of the _Eclair_. And a day or two afterwards she told me that it was there, in the office of M. Montorgueil... that she wrote to you the letter of rectification which you must have received from her. Since then, Ghirelli has often asked me for money.... Last night, she again asked me for money, and again I told her: 'No, your being a witness makes it impossible for us to give you money... I only gave evidence in order to re-establish the reality of the facts _in all its exactness_.

"(Signed) SAUERWEIN.

SIMON.

ANDRe."

(_Dossier_ Cote 3035)

Comment is unnecessary.

In regard to the mission to Mme. Prevost with which I was alleged to have entrusted Ghirelli, who was described in the _Matin_ as having mysteriously journeyed to Mme. Prevost's by motor-car, several persons residing in the street where the motor-car was said to have stopped--who had been mentioned by the newspaper as having made statements that were quoted, of course--were interrogated on the matter by the Law:

"Mme. Kaufman, aged 41, doorkeeper at No. 11 Rue du Cher, consulted about the _Matin_ article... declared: I have not made the statements attributed to me. I have never noticed an automobile at the corner of the street, nor did I see Mme. Prevost go and talk to some one hidden in a motor-car. _I absolutely confute everything that I have been made to say in the_ Matin. It is not accurate, and, what is more, it is untrue.'"

"Mlle. Leveque, aged 23... No. 11 Rue du Cher... consulted on the same matter, declared: I have seen nothing of the facts described in the _Matin_ article, and have made _no declaration whatever to any one_, for the simple reason that I know nothing (about the matter), and that at the time when it is said a motor-car stopped near my shop I was not there.... I also wish to state that I don't know at all Mme. Prevost, and I don't like having been mixed up in that affair."

"M. and Mme. Thomas, doorkeepers, 9 Rue du Cher, also consulted, declared they had not seen the motor-car mentioned in the _Matin_, and they added that Mme. Prevost, their tenant, had not come down from her apartment on that day--December 31st--for she was unwell and could not leave her room.

"Mme. Prevost herself, asked whether she had received any letter from Mme. Steinheil on that date, and in the circ.u.mstances related by the _Matin_, declared that she had received nothing whatever from her since the last summer.

"(Signed) INSPECTOR DECHET."

(_Dossier_ Cote 3017)

There remains one point to elucidate in the Ghirelli-Sauerwein interviews: the question of the pearl which I was said to have placed in M. Chabrier's pocket-book, and then to have placed it in Couillard's, only after a violent scene with Mme. Chabrier.

Here again I will quote from the Dossier, and the reader will have a further opportunity of looking into the methods of the newspaper which did so much to ruin me in the eyes of public opinion--as much while I was in prison as before my arrest:

"This January 21st, 1909, before us, Andre", &c.... has appeared M.

Chabrier... who states:

"... I have never had any knowledge that Mme. Steinheil tried to put, or did put in my pocket-book the pearl which was afterwards found in that of Couillard. I had never seen that pearl, and had never heard of it until the moment... when at the _Matin_ offices, and before me, M. de Labruyere opened Couillard's pocket-book and made an inventory of its contents--which brought about the discovery of the pearl.

"With respect to this discovery--and as _one of the instances of the methods of intimidation adopted by journalists in November 1908, against the various inhabitants of No. 6 bis Impa.s.se Ronsin_--I wish to draw your attention to the following fact:

"On November 24th (the day before the Night of the Confession) M. de Labruyere came to the house and talked to me about an article in the _Journal_, which stated that it was he who had opened Remy Couillard's pocket-book. He added that since the statement was not correct, he wanted to prove to M. Bunau-Varilla that he, de Labruyere, had not opened the pocket-book. He asked me therefore to write a letter in which I would certify that I (Chabrier) had myself opened the pocket-book.

"Since it was M. de Labruyere who had opened it--as I stated when I gave evidence on November 21st, 1908--I protested, and so did my wife.