My Memoirs

In spite of his blind fury, he was able to realise their size, but he was not going to allow himself to be thwarted by such a trifling matter.

He caught his breath, then, coming nearer to me, he exclaimed: "Yes, all murderers have long arms and enormous hands.... Well, you are different, you are an exception, that's all.... And the very smallness of your hands proves that you are guilty. Even in your physique you deceive, you lie.... And those little hands which look so innocent are the more criminal, since they look so innocent. There!"

And he concluded this frenzied outburst by dealing a terrific blow on the table with his clenched fist.

I looked at him, I watched his hands....

"What's the matter! Why do you look at me like that!"

I looked fixedly at the hands of the examining magistrate, enormous, red, hairy hands, and then let my gaze wander over his long arms, until my eyes met his....

I was trembling with pain and anger. This man had treated me like a murderess from the very first minute of the Instruction, and had tortured me as those two journalists had one night, only more relentlessly, and with greater persistence.... They had an excuse—they were after copy—but this judge had none. He was supposed to be seeking light, and truth, and justice. And no judge should take it for granted that the person he is interrogating has committed the crime of which he—or she—is suspected.

"What are you looking at?" M. André asked.

"I was examining your hands, Monsieur le Juge."...

"Well...?"

"... And I was thinking what a fortunate thing it was for you that you are not accused of any murder, for even though you were as innocent as I am, the size and look of your hands would unmistakably denounce you as a murderer—if you had to deal with a judge after your own heart!"

Each Instruction lasted from noon until seven or eight in the evening. I was then taken back to the Dépôt, where I waited one hour and often much longer before being escorted to Saint-Lazare by two or three inspectors. It was sometimes ten or eleven, when, thoroughly exhausted, and having had no food for twelve hours or so, I entered my cell where Firmin and Jacq were waiting for me. Firmin never went to bed until I was back.

Sister Léonide, too, awaited me.... After the third or fourth Instruction, she was so alarmed at my appearance that she thenceforth always had some kind of surprise in store for me when I returned from the Palace of Justice. On one occasion she gave me a little plate, an ordinary, coarse, penny white plate, but what a luxury!... Then she presented me with three parcels wrapped in tissue paper, and in them I found a little salt, a small piece of butter, and... three hot potatoes in their jackets. It seemed to me that I was hungry, that I must be hungry, after those Instructions, but somehow I could not eat. On that occasion, however, I was overjoyed to see food on a plate, and Sister Léonide fed me with a spoon, as one feeds a child. After that she brought me three baked potatoes every evening.

She asked me one day how it was that I was so fond of them, and I told her that it was my father's favourite dish. Potatoes "in their jackets" are called in French pommes de terre "en robe de chambre" (in their dressing-gowns), but my father said, far more prettily: "en robe des champs," which sounds alike, but means in their country clothes, in nature's garb.

M. André was convinced that I was guilty, but in view of the long report which he would have to draw up at the end of the Instruction, and which would go to the Chambre des Mises en Accusations, he had to accumulate at least as many proofs as possible of my guilt, and as there were none, his task was arduous! And it was the very difficulty of his task which made him so aggressive, threatening, and palpably unjust.

There was not a method, there was not a trick, that he did not think permissible. In order to put me off my guard, as it were, he would jump from one question to another, question me, for instance, about a detail of my life at Bellevue, then abruptly ask me the exact figures of the various sums of money that I said were to be found in the drawer of the desk of my boudoir, on the night of the crime. After bewildering me with questions about the exact origin of such amounts (six months after the money had been stolen) he would ask me a list of the contents of our medicine-chest at the time of the murder!

At every Instruction he dealt with everything—at once....

And when I hesitated, faltered, made a slight mistake or did not exactly repeat the answers I had made on other occasions to the same questions, he jumped up with glee: "I've got you!"...

Another of the examining magistrate's favourite methods was to ask me a question of such a length that when written down, it covered quite two large pages.... And woe betide me if I missed a single one of the numberless points included in that one question! When, on a few occasions, I ventured to ask that some portion of the endless question be repeated to me, I was told, in a melodramatic tone, that I wanted time to reflect, and that I should not need to reflect if I were innocent, that the truth never hesitated, but burst forth at once.

When my nerves failed me, and I broke down, or sobbed; my weakness, my grief, were due to remorse; therefore I was guilty.

When I cried that I was innocent, I was playing a comedy, but he was not to be taken in by my grimaces! I was acting; therefore I was guilty.

When I did not mention my innocence, I was overwhelmed with shame, and did not even dare to say that I was not guilty; therefore I was guilty!

Whilst I was thus being slowly tortured, the three men and the woman who that night entered my house in the Impasse Ronsin, who committed the double murder, who robbed, who bound and gagged me... were free, somewhere in the world, in Paris, perhaps, and possibly reading the latest details of my Instruction in the newspapers, for after each "sitting" a résumé of the proceedings was handed to the Press, in which, as the reader may surmise, I appeared more and more guilty!

Eight months after the end of the Instruction, at my trial, the Judge, M. de Valles, was to declare: "I feel the shudder of a judicial error," and the jury acquitted me. Eight months! Why did not M. André feel that "shudder of the judicial error"? Because, and this is his only excuse, he was obsessed by the firm conviction that I was guilty, and, more or less unconsciously, he made nearly everything fit in with that conviction, and, at the same time, ignored or passed rapidly over almost anything that he could not. A few instances taken from the Dossier of the Instruction—signed by M. André, M. Simon, and myself—will illustrate my assertions:

(M. André had been asking me endless details about a ring and a pearl, when he pointed out to me some contradictions in my past statements.)

(M. André interrupted me with the following triumphant exclamation:)

Question. "Then you felt no sorrow at having lost your husband!"

Answer. "But yes, of course."...

Another instance:

Question. "It can hardly be admitted that robbery was the motive of the crime, for one cannot very well conceive that the thieves, after committing a double crime in order to act at their ease, would neglect to rob, and should leave on the spot, the following booty: (1) In your mother's room, three rings on a tray; (2) One diamond brooch, two valuable pendants, two pins with small stones—which your mother had brought to your house when she put up there in May.... (3) In your husband's room, the latter's clothes were not searched, and yet they were placed, conspicuously, on a chair, and they contained a gold watch, a purse containing eighty francs (£3 4s.); (4) In the boudoir, a bank note of fifty francs (£2) was left, although it was conspicuous; (5) From the statements you made just now, some of your daughter's jewels, which were then in her room, where you slept, were not stolen!"

Answer. "What can I answer you... anything may be found strange.... People who had just committed a murder would not perhaps be as calm as you think and so would not steal everything."

(I then explained that my mother's bag was on the floor in a box-room, that night.)

Question. "That explanation is hardly satisfactory."

Answer. "All I can say is that people, after committing two such ghastly murders, and after believing they had made a third victim of me, may have lost their heads, and only have had one thought: to disappear as rapidly as possible."

(Dossier Cote 3239)

As for the robbery, did not the men steal several hundred pounds, and some twenty pieces of jewellery, belonging to me and my mother?

Question. "Since your last examination, we have compared the recital of the drama as you made it then with the one you made at the beginning of the investigations (May 31st and June, 1908). We find that whilst you merely mentioned to us, as the acts of violence you suffered at the hands of the criminals, one blow on the head and the trampling on your stomach, you had previously mentioned other acts of violence: on May 31st, 1908, to the police-commissary, you said that you had received blows with a stick, on your head; on May, 31st, to the police-commissary, and then to M. Leydet, you said you had been seized by the throat at the beginning of the scene; on May 31st and on June 5th, to M. Leydet, you said that one of the men had clasped your wrist, and finally, on June 26th, to M. Leydet—to whom you never mentioned more than 'one blow on the head'—you declared with precision that the blow had been like one dealt with a club, or with a hard body, and that it had evidently been meant by the criminals to be the finishing stroke. How do you explain so many variations in your successive recitals?"

Answer. "You should not take into account the statements I made on May 31st (shortly after the fatal night); I did not know what I was saying then, I was out of my mind, I was frightened of everything. One of the men did seize my wrist.... If I spoke with more precision on June 26th, about the blow on my head, it is because, since the drama, I had been trying to recall every detail of it."

Answer. "That was the result of the work of the journalists. They led me to distraction, madness."

Question. "In any case, the tale of the black gowns is full of material impossibilities. Why should the criminals, at the beginning of the scene, have thrown a cloth on your head, since they did not keep it there, and since you were able to get rid of it immediately afterwards? How can you explain this: those dark lanterns threw a great light on you, and yet, the criminals made the mistake and persisted in it, of thinking they were in the presence of a young lady, of a child? They were in the shadow, and yet you distinguished them so perfectly that you were able to observe thoroughly every one of the actors of that scene, to notice the absence of a collar from their special costumes, and the ugliness of the red-haired woman, and to read clearly the expression on the face of that red-haired woman. How can one explain that all the doors being open, you did not hear your husband leave his bed and take his alpenstock, nor hear either your husband or your mother scream whilst they were being strangled?"

Answer. "A cloth was thrown over my head. I don't know whether the lanterns were dark lanterns or not. All I know is that their light was the greater because it was reflected by the five mirrors in the room.... There is nothing extraordinary in the fact that the criminals took me for my daughter. I look older now, but at that time I had quite a youthful appearance, so much so that I was most of the time taken not for my husband's wife, but for his daughter. As for the doors—which were open when we all went to bed—I don't know whether the criminals left them open. All I heard, I repeat it, was the word 'Meg,' spoken by my mother at the moment I said."

(The next question, asked without any transition, was):

"Did you put a pearl in Couillard's pocket-book on November 20th?"

(Dossier Cote 3249)

Question."... Your cleverness at dissimulating before the Law has become such that in the course of our interrogations we have rarely obtained from you a clear and convincing explanation, such that, every time we have asked you to reply in a precise manner to our questions concerning the dominating facts of the case, you have, as a rule, tried to avoid replying, often by saying you did not remember, or even that you did not understand. You have even gone so far as to let the fear that your face might betray you in our presence, make you hide it behind the black veil with the wide thick edge which you are still wearing, and which, in spite of the exhortations we addressed to you during one of our first interrogations, you have never raised above your forehead. Your face has no more revealed itself than, willingly, you have revealed the bottom of your thoughts."

(Dossier Cote 3240)

(I had been told not to speak about President Faure, even when asked about my friends, nor about the famous pearl necklace, even when questioned about the stolen jewels. The necklace was mentioned, however, but not by me. And I realised then the truth of Maître Aubin's words, when he had said that neither the Government nor the Law wished to have anything to do with my relations with Félix Faure and the mysterious necklace affair. M. André, who, when I hesitated, compelled me to reply in no half-hearted manner, made a striking exception on that occasion, as the reader may see from the following quotations from the Dossier.)

The Judge asked: "Don't you know that it was a pearl necklace Brun pledged?"

I hesitated to reply, and finally said (I quote from the Dossier):

"Allow me not to talk about that. It was a necklace I received as a present; it had five rows of pearls. I gave it to my husband, and told him he could do what he liked with it, that he could sell it when he pleased."...

(Dossier Cote 8308)

I explained that my husband and I lived quite apart, but that I allowed him to make use of my jewels when he was short of money. When I had finished, M. André made no remark at all about the pearl necklace, and proceeded with his interrogating as if that jewel had had no importance whatever.

Two days later, however, during the next Instruction, M. André, wanting, perhaps, to make sure that the necklace Brun had spoken of was really the mysterious and all-important necklace given by President Faure, asked me a few details about it. I replied:

"The five-row pearl necklace, of which I spoke to you the day before yesterday, was sold during the past ten years little by little, that is, pearl by pearl or in series of pearls, by my husband. I did not have anything to do with those sales.... All I know is that at the time of the drama there still remained some pearls from that necklace.... Those pearls were then in the lower drawer of the wardrobe where I usually placed my jewel-cases. I had seen, towards May 5th or 6th, about ten pearls. I had not taken them to Bellevue, and since the drama I have not seen them again. They have therefore been stolen, unless my husband had sold them between May 5th and May 30th, but that would surprise me...."

Question. "Why have you not spoken about those pearls?"...

Question. "By mentioning their disappearance, nothing compelled you to indicate their origin?"

Answer. "I did not wish to speak about that necklace"....

(Dossier Cote 3310)

Once again M. André did not insist.

During another Instruction, one month later (Dossier Cote 3389), M. André tried to make me contradict myself about the necklace, stating that one of my accounts of the occasion when M. Brun consented to pledge jewels for my husband did not tally with another; he also remarked that my friend M. Mustel, the piano and organ manufacturer, who had seen the famous pearls, had described, in quite a different way from that in which I had described it, a family scene, at my house, about certain debts of my mother's which I was ready to pay by selling the pearls I still possessed. But all this had but a very vague connection with the necklace itself. I may further state that M. Brun stated that he received only about £6 for the necklace he pledged, so that either he referred to a necklace of which I know nothing, or he made a huge mistake. At any rate, I do not know of necklaces with five rows of pearls that would merely fetch £6 when pledged!

I may quote a few lines from M. Brun's evidence:

"M. Steinheil asked me... to pledge at the Mont-de-Piété a pearl necklace of several rows... On the same day, at the office in the Rue des Blancs-Manteaux, I pledged the necklace, in my name, and received, I believe, 150 francs (£6)."

(Dossier Cote 1929)

Now, as every one knows, the Mont-de-Piété is a State Institution, and its books are kept in the same thorough and methodical manner as that of all other State "Administrations." The Mont-de-Piété, in reply to inquiries ordered by M. André replied that:

"... The pledging of a pearl necklace (whether by the Steinheils or by M. Brun) was not mentioned in their books..."

The pearls were not mentioned in the final report of M. André, nor in the Indictment, nor were they once referred to at my trial. Can any one blame me if I say I have always thought that "the authorities" knew about the necklace but did not want that mystery to be unravelled, no more than they wanted to know that some of the jewels stolen on the night of the crime came from a President, and two, at least, from an Attorney-General. I have also always thought that "the authorities" knew that I possessed important documents and the Memoirs of Félix Faure. True, by order, I never spoke of them except to M. Desmoulin, the Director of the Prison, my counsel, and Pastor Arboux—and I just pronounced the word "documents" before M. Leydet and M. Hamard—but whether the authorities knew about them or not, I can only say that no mention of them was made to me.

At Saint-Lazare, one day—at the time of that long and nerve-racking Instruction—two municipal guards came to take me to the Palace of Justice.

I said to the gaoler: "Where are 'my' inspectors?"

"Madame," the man replied, "it is no longer M. Hamard who sends for you, but M. André, the judge, and M. André, it seems, has given new instructions."

The non-commissioned officer very politely made me enter a fiacre (a four-wheeled cab). He then sat down near me, and the other soldier sat opposite me. Both had revolvers at their side. The carriage started on its journey.

"Why have not the inspectors come, as usual?" I asked.

"Ah! Madame, we don't know.... Your judge doesn't seem to like you."...

"I hope not; I cannot believe that."...

As we neared the Palace of Justice, I noticed that the driver was not taking us the usual way. The non-commissioned officer said: "We are going round to the Boulevard du Palais," and when, seeing that I was not being driven to the Dépôt, I asked where he was taking me, he replied, after much hesitation: "To the Souricière (the Mouse-Trap)."

"Yes. Madame.... You will have to wait there until the Judge is ready to receive you."... And with great gentleness, the man added: "We have lost a great deal of time on our way to Saint-Lazare, and fetched you as late as possible, so that you will not have to wait long."

I thanked the officer, entered through the "new" door, and was taken through low, damp, cold passages to the Souricière. Saint-Lazare is bad enough, Heaven knows; the Dépôt worse, but the Souricière is an abomination. Let the reader imagine two rows of cages, one on top of the other, and with steps to reach the upper row. Opposite, on a kind of platform, sits a Sister, who can see through the iron bars of each case the prisoners of both rows of cages.

When she saw me, the Sister on duty, Sœur Berthe, a very old, sweet-eyed sister, tottered towards me and took me to one of the empty cages.

When I say cages, I am not exaggerating. Each cage, unspeakably filthy and foul-smelling, is about seven feet high, five feet long, and three feet wide. The door forms one wall, as it were; the upper half is a square hole barred from side to side and from top to bottom. Air enters through this hole, which has no glass. The door opens from the outside.

I heard afterwards that those wretched women often had to wait in those foul cages for eight or nine hours for the Examining-Magistrate or the prison van—which they call the panier à salade (salad-basket).

Eight or nine hours in a cage!... I thought of an examining-magistrate, M. L., whom I had known years ago. He was a great admirer of mine, and frequently forsook his duties to come and pay me compliments or to listen to some music in my salon.... And I thought him a charming man!

Now, I realised that whenever he wasted time at my house the woman, perhaps several women, had had to wait in a cage, hour after hour, until his return, and I felt bitterly ashamed of myself for not having guessed that a magistrate, like a doctor, has patients who cannot, who must not, wait.

I waited only three hours in my cage! But when I entered M. André's Cabinet, I felt more dead than alive, and I said to him: "You will not see me again. You sent for me at Saint-Lazare hours too soon. I have spent three hours at the Souricière, and I understand that it was owing to an order given by you. How can you expect me to answer your questions, after what I have just passed through?"

I WILL now quote almost in full the final Instruction, which took place on March 13th, 1909. I cannot well conceive a more intensely poignant and dramatic document, and after over two years, when I re-read it, I can hardly believe that those Questions were put to me, and that the Answers were those I made, in the room of an Examining Magistrate, who accused me of having murdered my husband and my mother.

"On March 13th, 1909, before us, André, has been brought the widow Steinheil."

Question. "With the reservations and the restrictions with which we acquainted you during your previous interrogatory, Dr. Balthazard has expressed the opinion that the crime cannot have been committed by one person alone. In any case, the evidence, as a whole, seems to establish the fact of your personal participation in the crime, and we have, to-day, in an interrogatory which we consider as being the final one, to recall to your mind, the various presumptions and charges which have been brought against you."

Answer. "I protest to you with all my soul that I am innocent, and that you have in your dossier the proof of my innocence."

Question. "In what can you protest that we have any proof?"

Question. "On November 26th, at the time of the proceedings against Rémy Couillard, you attributed the crime to Alexandre Wolff, whilst on the same day, when describing the circumstances in which Wolff acted, you have made different and contradictory statements, then, you have made a retractation. Besides, the investigations that have been made about Alexandre Wolff did not justify the suspicions against him."

Answer. "As I have explained, I imagined, under the influence of journalists who had unhinged my mind, all that I said about Wolff. I repeat once more that Wolff is innocent."

Question. "From the outset until November 26th, then constantly ever since, you have attributed the crime to four individuals—three men and one red-haired woman—all four dressed in long black gowns, and the men wearing hats with high crowns and wide brims."

Answer. "I change nothing in my statements on this point."

Question. "At the beginning of the investigations, two different facts seemed to corroborate your narrative. On June 2nd, a letter bearing the signature of a certain 'Arthur Rewer' whose identity it has been impossible to establish, was sent to the Sûreté. It asserted that on the night of May 30-31st, about 12.45 A.M., four men and a red-haired woman left the Impasse Ronsin. Also, the discovery in a carriage of the Metropolitan, on the evening of May 31st, of an invitation card to the recent exhibition of your husband's paintings together with a visiting card torn in two pieces, which bore a few addresses, took the Sûreté to Guilbert the costumier, and led one to believe that the black gowns you said were worn by the assassins, might have been stolen from a basket of costumes supplied by this Guilbert to the Hebrew Theatre during the afternoon of May 30th.

"During our investigations, however, we have—under the influence of the very grave signs of your personal guilt—wondered whether the theft at the Hebrew Theatre—admitting its reality from May 31st—and the leaving in the underground of the documents we have mentioned, had not been arranged at your instigation, or at that of any other accomplice in the crime in order to give some likelihood to the description you were going to make of the crime." (!)

Answer. "I maintain all my statements. I have always drawn—I still draw—from my conscience, the strength to bear all this mystery. It has always seemed to me as if, thanks to that card of invitation to the exhibition of his works, my husband himself were telling me from his tomb: 'All that you have said is true. Have the courage to discover the murderers.'"

(Which amounted to nothing more or less than telling me: you have been unable to find who these assassins were, therefore, you are the assassin.)

Answer. "I can only repeat what I said at the very start to M. Hamard, in all sincerity, about the men and the red-haired woman I saw, and saw well, around my bed in the circumstances I have described.

"You think it unlikely that the men would have put on hampering gowns in order to steal. Yet, in the murder of M. Remi, which happened eight days after the double murder in the Impasse Ronsin, the murderers were stark naked. That is not more extraordinary than the men in the black gowns. Yet, had I said the assassins were entirely naked, you no doubt would have called me a mad and hysterical woman!"

Question. "Above all we must examine the following point: Is there any real cause to believe that the crime was a banal, commonplace one, committed by vulgar burglars. The answer to this question, it appears to us, should be in the negative, and we will say why. Had the crime been the work of ordinary malefactors, it could, logically, have had no other aim than robbery. Now—even admitting the reality of any theft at your house, on that night—the malefactors would not have left behind abundant and conspicuous booty in the rooms they visited... (Here M. André repeated the list of the valuables left in their places by the murderers.) It is absolutely inadmissible that malefactors who had come to steal would have left a sum of 130 francs (£5 4s.) and so many jewels. Besides, it seems that the burglary was merely a sham, as one may still realise from the photographs in the dossier where one could see the various objects on the ground, scattered in too good order—which does not fit in with the great hurry inherent in all burglaries....

"How can one believe that ordinary criminals would have relied on chance to find (in your house) the instruments for their double homicide and their attempt on your life! Finally, what reason could they have had to spare you? To allow you to survive was to allow a dangerous witness to survive!"

Answer. "It is impossible for me to give you explanation of all this. I can only and simply repeat what I heard and saw. That I was taken for my daughter is not surprising, although it has made so many people smile, since I looked young in those days, and was occupying my daughter's room. Besides, can one say that those murderers really spared me when one thinks of the way they bound me and of how they struck me on the head? Innocent, yes, I am innocent. I had no reason whatever to kill my husband and my mother. I am innocent."

Question. "The various reasons which lead one to eliminate the version of assassins who came to rob constitute as many reasons to believe that the crime was a 'domestic' one. And since you have survived the crime in very peculiar circumstances; since, concerning all the details connected with the crime, you have accumulated 'unlikelihoods', contradictions and lies; since you had a personal interest in the crime, the revelation has gradually been made evident that you took a direct part in the crime."

Answer. "I have taken no part whatever in the crime. Why, why, should I have done so?"

Answer. "It is impossible for me to explain to you what took place in the minds of those monsters. Perhaps they thought I was bound tightly enough. In any case if, as you believe it, I took some part in the crime and had an accomplice, I should surely have had enough intelligence and presence of mind to have had myself treated with more severity, since I am being reproached with the fact that I remained alive!"

(M. André then mentioned the various bruises found on my body and remarked that they were very slight.)

Answer. "I have no need to reply to all this. If I bore no external marks, I suffered internally to such an extent that I was dangerously ill for two months, as you may find in your own dossier."...

Question. "Beside the very significative absence of real violence, the persistent effort you made to hide facts accuses you. At the very beginning of, and throughout the inquiry you declared that you had never seen the alpenstock and the glove found in the boudoir, but our investigations have made it appear quite likely that the alpenstock was one of the accessories in your husband's studio. And it has been proved that the glove (a man's glove) had been given you."...

Answer. "I never saw the alpenstock in the studio or elsewhere in the house; and granting the glove had belonged to M. Ch. I didn't remember it. (I sometimes asked my friends for their old gloves which I used when I had to cut flowers, to paint certain objects or do some rough work.) Had I remembered that alpenstock and that glove, I should have hastened to say so; I had no reason not to do so."

(M. André evidently forgot that I felt so little those "anxieties on account of the investigations" that month after month, I urged the police to renew their efforts, and even sought the assistance of the Press, when I heard that the solution of the Impasse Ronsin murder mystery was being given up! After discussing once more the question of the gag and the stolen money and jewels, I had once more to explain that the expert had evidently not examined the piece of wadding which had been in my mouth, and also why I had five of my jewels altered by M. Souloy. But M. André merely remarked:)

"You have lied always and about everything.... To such an attitude there is but one explanation: you tried to ward off suspicions, and therefore you took a direct part in the murder."

Answer. "You want to find lies in everything. If I spoke some untruths, it was solely to conceal certain facts of my private life, certain 'friendships' I had had."

(The next remark of the examining magistrate was a fantastic one:)

Question. "It is interesting to observe, at any rate, as an oddity, that your story of the crime and the mise en scène appears to bear the stamp of your own imagination. For the tale of the black gowns sounds very much like reminiscence of the personages in several of your late husband's pictures. On the other hand several of the details bear a striking likeness to the incidents in a famous murder case which took place at Montbéliard in 1885, when you were sixteen years old, and which fascinated the population of that district where you were then living."

(M. André then proceeded to "prove" my guilt by the fact that I had got rid of "Turk," the borrowed dog, and that I had enticed my mother to come to my house at the end of May, and had prevented her from going to Bellevue, to which accusation I replied by stating once more the real facts, fully corroborated by our doctor.)

"... On Saturday, May 30th, it was at the last moment, when I saw that my mother could not stand on her legs, that we decided not to go to Bellevue to sleep."

Question. "As regards the problem of finding out why you premeditated the murder, not only of your husband but also of your mother, and if you had a direct rôle in those murders: the solution appears to lie in the 'moral preoccupation' you had at the time...."

(And M. André tried to prove that, being financially embarrassed, disliking my husband, and having constant quarrels with both him and my mother, I had thought of becoming the wife of M. Bdl., that a divorce being out of the question on account of M. Bdl.'s ideas, and also on account of M. Buisson's, on the matter, the "disappearance" of my husband and my mother had appeared to me as settling all difficulties and satisfying all my ambitions....)

Question. "During the three months after the drama, events twice foiled your plans. Perturbed by the suspicions which existed against you in so many minds, M. Bdl. and also the Buisson family moved away, and kept away from you. In those circumstances, not only Marthe's future as you conceived it, but also your ambitions in regard to M. Bdl. ran serious risks of being irretrievably compromised. Hence, unless you were to allow a large portion of the advantages of the double murder to escape, the urgent necessity of a justification before public opinion. Hence, on October 30th, the daring move of your letter to the Echo de Paris, that is your claim, made publicly, for a prolongation of the inquiries, and of the search for the murderers of your husband and your mother. And since that prolongation has led to the revelations of your guilt, your attitude simply shows that you had the temerity to go as far as you could in your purpose of winning and enjoying, somehow or other, and at any cost, the fruits of your double crime."

Question. "The result of the proceedings is that you are accused:

Firstly: Of having, in Paris, during the night of May 30th-31st, 1908, voluntarily dealt death to M. Steinheil;

And that with premeditation.

Secondly: Of having, in the same circumstances, time and place, voluntarily dealt death to Madame Edouard Japy, your legitimate mother."

Answer. "It is an abominable and monstrous accusation, I protest against it with all my soul, and I beg with all my heart those who will be called upon to examine and judge your Dossier, I beg them in the name of my child to realise, to see, that I could not have murdered either my husband or my mother. No, I cannot be accused of such an infamous, abominable crime. There is nothing in my life which could explain such a deed on my part."...

"The accused cries and sobs."

(This document has been) "Read—Have signed:
"Widow Steinheil.
"Simon.
"André."

(Dossier Cote 3433)

..."She cries, she sobs," says the report of the final Instruction. Just four little words, but what deep grief and suffering they represent!

In spite of this, however, such a report does not convey the pathos and the tragic importance of the proceedings.

In spite of all I had said and done, in spite of all facts which proved my innocence—that innocence which the jury were to realise and proclaim eight months later—M. André, who had thought me guilty from the first, refused to alter his opinion, and coolly and with a faint smile of self-satisfaction, declared to me that I was accused of having murdered my husband and my mother!

M. Simon had tears in his eyes. My counsel stood near me fearing that I should faint. I made a superhuman effort and rose.

I signed my name at the foot of the last page of that terrible Instruction; I handed the pen to M. Simon, and then M. André signed. As I passed out before him, on my way back to the Dépôt, and thence to Saint-Lazare, the Judge, against whom I had fought for my life for so many days, quietly said to me: "Au revoir, Madame." He lighted a cigarette and jauntily left the room, greatly satisfied with himself.

A judge, he apparently did not know that "good faith is the foundation of Justice."

Decidedly, he felt, life was a grand thing, the Instruction a sublime institution and an examining magistrate a saviour of society.... And M. André was sure of promotion now!

Like so many judges I have known—and my address-book alone, which was seized at the time of my arrest but has never been returned to me in spite of many applications for it, could supply the number of all the magistrates who eagerly attended my receptions and told me anecdotes about their careers and their work!—M. André suffered from that illness which Brieux, in "La Robe Rouge" (the Red Robe), has aptly called, "the fever of promotion, which turns so many honest men into bad Judges."

When I returned to "my" cell at the Saint-Lazare prison, I had not lost all hope. Maître Aubin, as I was on my way to the Dépôt, declared: "There is absolutely nothing against you. You may be released at any time, now. Never mind M. André! When the dossier of the Instruction is read by those who have power to decide whether you are to be set free or tried in the Court of Assize, they will realise your innocence. The fact that you did not obtain a favorable reply to your recent petition, proves nothing."

The exact contents of this petition may interest the reader, inasmuch as it reveals various facts in connection with the crime, which I have hardly mentioned so far:

(No. 342) March 8th, 1909. Monsieur le Juge d'Instruction.

"Following public opinion, which is so terribly against me but which, when it is better informed, will necessarily become again generous and just, you have considered me a monstrous criminal. I have endured your ten interrogatories, your sixty hours of questions, without flinching, and have always asserted my innocence. You have not believed me—could not believe me after all the foolish or extravagant things I have said and done, and have been made to say and do—(this last sentence was dictated to me by my counsel, who suggested that it would not be wise to be too aggressive). My narrative of the crime seemed to you, as to other people, fantastic and unacceptable; I was the only culprit, or I had an accomplice whom I had influenced, or by whom I had been influenced! The assassins, Monsieur le Juge, were those I said, and their number was the number I gave. And it is your own experts in their reports, your dossier in its final state, which prove it. I, the only criminal! To think that such a gross and abominable idea should be held for one moment! Why? To make it hang together it has been necessary to introduce the theory of a sleeping-draught or of some poison! Now, after the expert, Dr. Ogier, had declared that the bodies of the victims contained no trace of narcotic or poison, comes Dr. Balthazard, who supplies this irresistible argument: that my husband and my mother were so little poisoned, so little under the influence of a narcotic, that the latter got out of her bed and that the former rose and walked to the bath-room, both victims having incontrovertibly been killed at the spot and in the position in which their bodies were found. Thus is destroyed the odious hypothesis of the 'Tragic Widow,' giver of poison or narcotic, and slayer, with her own hands and without help, of her husband and mother.

(Then, I showed how the gowns stolen at the Hebrew Theatre must have been those worn by the murderers, and I mentioned the extraordinary and all-important discovery of the cards in the Underground, the day after the crime, cards which pointed to the Hebrew Theatre and to the "stolen gowns.")

"Besides, what motive could have led me to commit such a ghastly crime? It was not a desire to be free to marry, since the person you know of, would not and could not marry again for eight years! (M. Bdl. has often said, and to others beside me, that he would never give a step-mother to his children, and that before marrying again, he would wait till they were all grown up, which meant about eight years.) For financial reasons? How could one admit it, since, if the death of my mother brought me a small income, my husband's deprived me of one far larger! As regards the jewels which I declare to have been stolen, you know that, contrary to the news spread abroad, it has been impossible to find a single one, outside the four jewels I myself handed to M. Souloy on June 12th, as I have already told M. Leydet, and also that not one of my mother's jewels taken by the murderers, has been discovered.

"(Signed) Marguerite Steinheil Japy."

Four days later, on March 12th, that is on the eve of the final Instruction, my petition, was returned to me—rejected "purely and simply."

Maître Aubin had told me that, after the dossier had been carefully examined, I should probably be released; I believed him and tried to wait—patiently....

I have interrupted the description of my life in prison to deal with the Instruction, but I may now resume my narrative of the year of agony I spent at Saint-Lazare. That agony was only relieved by the devotion of a few persons, to some of whom I have already referred. The others I shall mention in the course of this chapter.

On January 1st, 1909, several Sisters came to give me their good wishes, but the traditional "A Happy New Year" sounded bitter and ironical to me, alas!

On the same day, through the kindness of a Benevolent Society, buns were distributed among the prisoners, and it was pathetic to watch their joy... and heartrending to see some of the mothers take the buns given to the children, and devour them while the little ones screamed with disappointment. Certain women in prison reach such a state of degradation that they even lose their motherly instincts!...

After the Instruction was over, Sister Léonide entered my cell one day, and said: "The Director wishes me to ask you for one of your boots... M. Hamard has applied for that." I complied with this strange request, but send a message to my counsel asking him to lodge a complaint against such arbitrary treatment. The Instruction was over. I had a right to be left in peace.

A few days later, Maître Aubin came to the prison. I had never seen him so jovial or beaming. He laughed so much that he could hardly speak. At last he spluttered out: "It's too funny, really!... The Substitut, the Procureur, and other magistrates, are all studying the dossier of your case. I suppose they are very much annoyed, since it clearly reveals your innocence. They probably don't see how they are going to draw up an indictment with the material at their disposal.... They wondered, and suddenly they exclaimed: 'The boot: We will catch her by the boot!'...

"You don't understand? Nor did I, at first! well, it appears that on one of the photographs, taken after the crime, of the floors in your apartments, one can see a mark left by a heel. The boots of all who were suspected of having any connection with the crime have been examined—in vain. Then, they sent for one of your boots. It was at once seen that the all-important heel-mark could not have been yours. But wait! The end of the story is the most humorous part of it: they have found, beyond any doubt, that the mark was made by the heel of the very photographer who photographed the floor!"

Maître Aubin was sincere. I know he was not thinking—and if he had, it would have been excusable—of the great speech he would make at the trial, of the fame and glory his rôle in the final act of the sensational drama could give him. He merely thought of what was best for me.... Alas, in spite of my acquittal, many people continued to believe me guilty, and less than a month after I reached England, I heard a number of people discuss the Steinheil affair and my personality in a drawing-room, and most of them agreed that I was a dangerous and fatal woman, and "very likely, a murderess." No one knew who I was; I had been invited to that soirée by an acquaintance who advised me to retain my incognito, and who introduced me under another name. I took part in the discussion about Mme. Steinheil. Men and women surrounded me because I "seemed to have studied the case more thoroughly than they had," as one lady put it, and I went so far as to tell them that I had met Mme. Steinheil and had found her a typical Parisienne, perhaps a little "weak" as a woman, but kind-hearted, artistically inclined, a devoted mother, and altogether a person absolutely incapable of a cowardly or a base action—still less, of course, of a crime.

"Of course it is," I said; "but how do you know she did murder her husband and her mother?"

"Why! The French newspapers said so. Besides, had she been innocent, they would not have tried her for her life!"

"But she was acquitted...."

"Yes, yes... quite so!... All the same, beware of this person, Madame, should you meet her again...."

Since then, I have often been in that drawing-room; the host, the hostess, and all their friends know now who I am, and I believe that although I am not a "fatal" woman, they would give their own life for me. To win them to me, I had merely to be—myself. They knew me, and yet I have only told them a very small part of my life-story. I hope and believe that all those who once condemned me without hesitation, and thought that I was guilty, just because "the French newspapers said so," will, after reading this painful account of my life and my "case," learn at last to forget the "Tragic," or "Red Widow," and to know, and, I trust, sympathise with, a woman who suffered unjustly the worst of martyrdoms.

Firmin left Saint-Lazare a short time after my last Instruction.

When she heard the great, the wonderful news, Firmin exclaimed: "Oh! Madame.... And I hoped so much you would be free long before me!" She was sorry, intensely sorry; not to leave the prison, of course, but to part from me. She packed her few belongings silently, then, when the moment of saying good-bye had come, Firmin came to me and said: "Madame, say you will grant me something... something I want to ask you and yet don't like to ask."

"Yes, Firmin, I promise."

Another prisoner took Firmin's place. She was a woman whom misery and an awful illness had made sour, hypocritical, and treacherous. She remained only a few weeks with me, but when she left Saint-Lazare I heard that she went about selling samples of my work—which I had not given her—and had also tried to sell "stories" about me....

A few hours after that poor woman's departure, Sister Léonide entered my cell.

"I have good news for you," she began. "Your future companion, whose name is Juliette, is a kind, able, active woman. She will be here with you this afternoon. I know Juliette well. She is a good woman, full of excellent qualities, but she is a thief. I suppose it is in her blood. She has been here very often, and I can assure you that you will have never been looked after so well as you will be by Juliette. She was a teacher once. She can talk, and she is well read and well mannered. And then, she has plenty of courage. She will not bewail her fate night and day like our poor little Firmin, but will try to cheer and comfort you. Juliette was recently sentenced to several years' imprisonment. They put her downstairs, but the other women hated her and even threatened to kill her, because she said she was convinced of your innocence. That did not stop her. Day after day since her arrival here she has asked to share your cell, and her request has been granted. And now, please, thank Sister Léonide, Madame!"

She spoke these last words in that loud, deep voice which she assumed when she wished to make me laugh.