My Memoirs Part 64

I. MY COUNSEL, MAITRE A. AUBIN II. THE JUDGE, M. DE VALLES III. THE ADVOCATE-GENERAL, M. TROUARD RIOLLE

Sketches by Mme. Steinheil]

Maitre Aubin then fully explained the all-importance of the "stolen black gowns," and the part certain journalists had played in the Impa.s.se Ronsin affair. His last words referred to my love for my Marthe.

"... I call to my side this pure and n.o.ble child; I want her close to me, stretching her arms appealingly towards you and defending her mother! These two unfortunate beings, how many tears they have already shed, how many tears they will still shed! Ah, gentlemen of the jury, give them the means to console one another and to forget together...

whilst blessing your justice."

My counsel has ceased speaking. There is a moment of silence, and that silence drags me out of my torpor. I raised my head with a last effort, and I see hundreds of eager faces all turned towards the judge... M. de Valles is now speaking. I can hardly hear, but from a few words: "did the prisoner... on May 30th-31st, 1908... murder...." I realise that he is reading to the jury the question to which they will have to reply.

I do not understand, I do not know... the Judge rises, the jurors file out... I am sobbing, sobbing....

I am carried away from the dock. The cooler air in the guards' room refreshes me. I am made to drink some tea and all kinds of men stand before me speaking words of encouragement... I have been told that I laughed and chatted.... Everything is possible....

I remember that the guards handed me post-card after post-card of myself--begging me to sign them. I could hardly hold the pen, and the number of cards was endless. Poor soldiers; they had been good to me in their own simple way, and they said that they could get quite a deal of money for cards with my autograph.... How happy they all looked.

Everybody says I shall be acquitted in a moment. Doctor Socquet tells me: "When the jury give their verdict, I will listen and then rush to you. If you see me, that'll mean that you are acquitted; if I don't come, well, you will know. If things go wrong, I shall not have the courage to come."

Some one tells me that it is eleven o'clock. The jury has been away fifteen minutes already. Fifteen minutes, and they have not yet found that I am innocent. How is it possible?

A bell rings.

I rise as if electrified.... And then some one tells me that the jury have summoned the President and Maitre Aubin. They want to be enlightened on some point.... The guards were whispering, and suddenly an unspeakable terror seizes me. They have talked aloud and cheerfully until now; they do not want me to hear the dreadful truth....

A quarter past eleven. Half-past eleven. A quarter to twelve.

Midnight.... Still nothing!

Will this martyrdom never end? What right has any one to make me suffer so? And where is Marthe, my own child. If she were only here, perhaps I could bear this agony.... How she must suffer, if she knows....

More people enter the guards' room. The two old ushers, who have seen many, many such trials, come to see me. One hails from my own province, the other acts at night as _maitre d'hotel_ and has seen me at many important dinners. One of them mutters in my ear: "Madame, don't you worry about anything. I am used to all this. Those jurors are all right; as sure as I stand here you will be acquitted, they can't help knowing that you are innocent.... Look here! The minute the verdict is known, I'll come to the door there and say, 'Hoo!' Then raise your head, enter bravely in the dock, for the last time and show them all who you are."

Then I hear two men discussing in the corridor: "I tell you," says one of them, "that she is done for. If the jury wanted to acquit her, they would not summon the President, and the whole thing would have been over long ago!"

A guard tells me: "It's no longer the 13th of November now, but the 14th. There's luck for you!" and he hands me a few more cards to sign....

A quarter past twelve.... Half-past twelve. The bell again.

No, the time has not yet come. The jurors want more explanations. This second shock has a merciful effect. It takes out of me the last spark of vitality. Everything is blank. I wait for hours, for days, now, for I no longer know what I am waiting for. There is a small crowd around me, and they all say, "Courage, have courage." Of course, I have courage. I have had courage for the past eighteen months; what does anything matter!

A quarter to one.... One o'clock.... A quarter past one. Now I feel it.

Something is going to happen!...

The bell rings twice.

I see Doctor Socquet, quite pale; I hear some one cry, "Hoo!" and then I hear the most terrible, the most awe-inspiring, the most maddening storm I have ever heard.... I realised afterwards that what I heard at that unforgettable moment were the screams of enthusiasm and the frantic applause of hundreds of people who had heard the verdict: I was acquitted.... But I did not know. How could I understand anything!...

Guards rushed to me and carried me to the Court. The light dazzled me, and the storm rose again, more overwhelming than before. I vaguely saw hundreds of hands raised towards me... I saw hundreds of radiant faces shouting: "Bravo... Bravo... Acquitted... Acquitted...." Still I didn't understand. I took those cries for threats, and believed all those hands wanted to seize me, to tear me to pieces.... And then I looked at the jury, and among all those faces I saw one smiling, and then at last, I understood, and fell back.

Alas, alas. The one face in the world I had so longed to see was not there....

A room.... People are pressing my hand, kissing it, and I see tears in many eyes... and I hear the words, repeated over and over again: "What a trial. What a trial...."

A triumph! Good G.o.d!... Marthe is not there.

Never mind what happened afterwards. Doctor Socquet helped me once more, and others too. There were discussions, endless discussions as to how I was to be smuggled away. And there were journalists clambering for my "impressions...." I asked for my daughter to every one... then I begged to be taken home, but was told it was impossible.... The daughter of the Director of the _Depot_ most generously consented to "escape" in a motor-car, and thus to "draw" the journalists, whilst in another motor-car I was taken, with Maitre Steinhardt, and I believe a Press photographer, to a hotel I have been told that I was extremely bright and gay on the way.... At the hotel, I was told to sit whilst my photograph was being taken, hurriedly, and then I lay on a bed for a short time.... Early in the morning I was taken by motor-car to a nursing home at Le Vesinet, and on the way, I was bright and gay again, and I was photographed again!

I have heard that the photographer was well paid for his work, and that he even sold for a substantial sum a series of articles--to the _Matin_, of course--about that drive from the Palace of Justice to the Terminus Hotel, and the drive from the Terminus Hotel to Le Vesinet, in which he described at length and in fluent and sensational style, all the bright and gay things he imagined I had said and done....

But why, G.o.d of Mercy, was not my Marthe near me?

The reader must wonder, as I have long done myself, what exactly took place during the two hundred minutes that the jury deliberated.

In a quite indirect way, which, for obvious reasons I cannot divulge here, I have been able to ascertain the details of the long-drawn deliberation. These details are irrefutable:

An overwhelming majority of the jurors had decided that I was guilty, but the two or three who were in favour of an acquittal fought so strongly that long discussions ensued.

When the foreman rang the bell to summon the President, it was to ask questions about the murder of Mme. j.a.py, for the majority was of opinion that I had strangled not only my husband, but had also done my mother to death!... And this although the Advocate General himself, in his speech for the Prosecution, had withdrawn the charge of matricide.

Another discussion ensued, and one or two jurors wavered. Then, after an hour, the President, M. Trouard-Riolle and Maitre Aubin were once more summoned about the eventual wording of the verdict. After a fierce discussion, in which the stolen black gowns were the chief subject, my innocence appeared evident to one or two more jurors, and finally there were seven for an acquittal and five for a conviction. And thus I was acquitted after being for so long, without knowing it, so near to...

the scaffold!

CHAPTER x.x.xI

AFTER THE VERDICT

The nursing home to which I had been taken was that of Dr. Raffegeau and Dr. Mignon. My sister, Mme. Seyrig, had been there as a patient during a period of complete nervous prostration.

In despair and anguish, I asked Dr. Raffegeau where my daughter was, but he could not tell me, alas; he merely said: "Your brother-in-law telegraphed to me asking that I should reserve a room for you here where you would be able to recover. I am going to put you up in a pretty little pavilion, in the park of my establishment, and my wife and Mme.

Mignon will keep you company."

"But Marthe?..."

"She will no doubt be here soon...."

I spent that Sunday sitting at the window, watching the road and waiting for my daughter. Who was keeping her away from me? How she must be suffering, and how I suffered!... The noise of every motor-car that pa.s.sed made my heart beat faster and more painfully, but Marthe did not come.