My Memoirs Part 62

M. de Balincourt made a brief appearance. He stammered a few words, and went away.

M. Bdl. was the next witness, and disclosed that he had never entertained the idea of marrying. He concluded his evidence with the words: "I am convinced of Mme. Steinheil's absolute innocence." He was followed at the witnesses' bar by one of his friends, M. Martin, who, after stating that there had never been any question of marriage between M. Bdl. and me, turned towards me and said: "Madame, you have been shockingly abandoned by all, but you have my full esteem."

_Thursday, November 11._ The trial enters upon its final stage. A few witnesses come and give evidence, all of them favourable to me.... One of them, Inspector Pouce, bravely exclaims: "If Mme. Steinheil had told me she was guilty, I would not have believed her."...

Then there enters a man with military bearing, whom I can hardly recognise, but whose voice, when he takes the oath, sends a thrill through my broken frame. I recognise him now.... It is Sheffer, the friend of my youth, my _fiance_ for a few months, my first love... over twenty years ago!... Tears come into my eyes, and I hide my head between my hands....

Beaucourt!... My beloved father.... The avenue of chestnut trees... our meetings... our charming, innocent idyll....

M. Sheffer, softly, sadly, tells the story of our beautiful, our sweet romance.... I was eighteen then, and the happiest girl on earth, with a devoted mother and the best of all fathers.... And the young lieutenant loved me, and I loved him.... Life was beautiful, and the future smiled on me....

And there stands my fiance.... I have not seen him for over twenty years. He stands there at the bar. I can feel his eyes resting on me in a kindly way, from time to time, as he recalls the past.... "She was a charming young girl, refined, modest, artistically inclined.... She worshipped her father and her mother.... Marguerite is incapable of having committed the monstrous crime imputed to her...." My G.o.d! My G.o.d!

And I am that Marguerite j.a.py, and I sit in a prisoner's dock, and I am being tried for murder.... Is there no justice in this world! How much longer shall I be wrongly accused? How much longer am I to suffer? Has my martyrdom not lasted enough, then....

M. Sheffer ceases speaking.... I hear him turn round to leave the Court.

I raise my head, and our eyes meet.... There is tender pity in his eyes; there are tears in mine.... Oh! when will it all end?

The worst is coming. The Advocate-General rises, and throws back his red sleeves. The most tragic hour has come.... What horrible accusations will he make? What punishment will he ask for the crime I have never committed!...

CHAPTER x.x.x

THE SPEECH FOR THE PROSECUTION--THE SPEECH FOR THE DEFENCE

Dusk has fallen. An attendant clicks the switches on, one after the other, with a sharp, dry sound of rattling bones, and the Court is flooded with light. That little noise and the sudden light jar my nerves and hurt me.... I am no longer a normal human being. I do not know, at times, who I am or where I am, or what is going on around me.... Still, I know this tall man opposite, and I can read in his bloodshot eyes that he means to do me all the harm he can. I hold tight to the wooden part.i.tion before me; if I let go, I feel I shall fall.... And I must not, I will not, fall, at this supreme hour. I think of Marthe....

In a deep, harsh voice, M. Trouard-Riolle begins:

"Gentlemen of the jury, you have sat throughout eight hearings with the utmost patience. You have heard eighty witnesses. You have heard the experts. The voluminous dossier has been gone through by the President exhaustively.... The work and the strain have been truly terrible...."

Now he reviews my life story.... Every fact, every incident, from the days when I was a little girl of five, is turned and twisted into something damaging to my cause. Murmurs of disapproval punctuate this monstrous speech by the Public Prosecutor, but he goes on, implacably; and as he flings out his accusations as if they were personal attacks, as if he loathed me and wished the whole world to know it, his eyes blaze more and more fiercely....

There exist _no proofs whatever_ of my guilt, but, like M. Andre, M.

Trouard-Riolle is convinced that I am guilty, and this is enough. He is there to prosecute, to accuse, to call for the heaviest sentence, and he does so relentlessly, scornfully, wildly. And he seems to enjoy his "great" task.

He has not spoken for five minutes before he brands me--he is dealing with my childhood--as a consummate coquette, and a liar!

According to him, the parents of M. Sheffer must have had good reasons to object to the union of their son with the dangerous Marguerite!...

According to him, I married M. Steinheil because he had distinguished connections and resided in Paris, and because I was anxious to shine in society.... "To shine, indeed, has ever been her great ambition, and she did not stop at anything to achieve her ends!"... Now he deals with my love-affairs. I am not only a _comedienne_ and a dangerous _liar_, I am not only an immoral, but a _mercenary_ woman! M. Trouard-Riolle quite forgets that M. de Valles paid a glowing tribute, a day or two ago, to my "absolute disinterestedness," and thunders forth that I am a low, shrewd, calculating business-woman!...

While M. Trouard-Riolle goes on criticising my home-life, I wonder how _he_ dare judge _me_!... I want to speak, to cry out what I feel, but my three counsel entreat me once more to be calm, and Maitre Aubin, with that shrewd _bonhomie_ so typical of him, whispers to me: "Let him blindly accuse you... he is merely making my task easier!"

M. Trouard-Riolle explains that there are two women in "that creature!": the woman with the musical, enchanting, caressing voice, who conquers and deceives, and the woman who threatens, attacks, and stops at nothing.

"The motive of the crime was the anxiety of Mme. Steinheil to make a rich marriage, because she hated her husband and was in financial distress," and then comes this dramatic and unexpected declaration: "Mme. Steinheil has murdered her husband with or without the a.s.sistance of an accomplice. _But that the accusation of matricide it not sufficiently established...._

_Friday, November 12._ M. Trouard-Riolle continues his speech for the Prosecution. I have reached the extreme limit of physical and mental endurance. I breathe with the greatest difficulty, and can hardly open my eyes. During the night, I have suffered from a terrible nervous attack, and time after time, doctors have come to my a.s.sistance. I clutch the part.i.tion in front of me, but cannot feel it. My senses are numb, all except my hearing, alas....

M. Trouard-Riolle, speaks, speaks, speaks--his speech lasts altogether for nearly seven hours.

...There was no struggle, no violence; the whole affair was a sham... he explains. The lock of the door was not tampered with, and a false key could not have been used since the real key was found in the lock on the inside.... Therefore, Mme. Steinheil herself opened the door to admit her accomplice!... Pay no attention to M. Bdl's. att.i.tude, gentlemen of the jury... you cannot expect a man who has been a lover of a woman to give evidence against her.... To clear herself, she accuses people right and left, anybody and everybody.... Why did she resuscitate a case which was almost forgotten? On account of M. Bdl's. att.i.tude. Her husband objected to divorce. She was in financial difficulties. M. Bdl. was rich.... She killed her husband.... When she accused others of the crime she committed, she was in a nervous state, and it was the paroxysms of frenzy due to the pitiless and maddening questions of some journalists which, she says, caused her to make false accusations.... And yet in this Court, gentlemen of the jury, you have seen her self-controlled, fearless, impudent, answering all questions readily, unhesitatingly....

Remember that this woman lies as she breathes....

"... The men in black gowns, the red-haired woman? A fable!... A political side to the mystery? Nonsense!... Burglary? There was none!...

Why did those who killed M. Steinheil and Mme. j.a.py not murder Mme.

Steinheil as well? She claims that it is because they took her for her daughter.... But I say that murderers can be as well recognised by a girl of sixteen as by a woman of thirty-nine.... In either case they would have had no pity.... The fact that she was spared proves that she took part in the crime....

"She was bound so loosely that she could easily have freed herself, rushed to the window, and shouted for help.... But she had to play a part, and she did so.... She was ill when they found her the next morning? Of course she was! Any woman would be upset after having murdered her husband and witnessed the death of her mother....

"... What extraordinary burglars, gentlemen of the jury. They had revolvers, but committed the crime with cords and wadding!...

"How did the crime take place? It is quite clear:

"Mme. Steinheil hates her husband and wants to get rid of him because, on the one hand, there is a husband whom she despises, and, on the other, a wealthy lover whose wife she aspires to become. She tells herself that if she is found one night bound, near the body of her husband, everybody will believe her guilty. Then, with her perfidious temperament, she summons her mother to Paris to the house in the Impa.s.se Ronsin, not to kill her, but to have her there as a witness of the simulated attack. She devises that both her mother and herself are to be bound.

"Mme. Steinheil goes down and opens the door to a man or woman, but probably a woman.

"We had not sufficient proof to effect an arrest.... Then Mme. Steinheil and that woman, or Mme. Steinheil and that man, go upstairs after having taken the cord in the kitchen. It was not intended to murder Mme. j.a.py, but an unforeseen event occurs while she is being fastened and the wadding forced into her mouth.... M. Steinheil is awakened by her cries, and the two women, or the woman and the man, rush at him. One holds his body, the other strangles him. The painter falls dead....

"Meanwhile, Mme. j.a.py's false teeth have become unfastened, and she died by suffocation; but, to make sure of her death, they strangled her. At first I did not believe that Mme. Steinheil was guilty. But now my conviction is established. If I had had the slightest doubt I would have told you so, but, on the contrary, I say that the work betrays its author, and the author is there."

I looked up at M. Trouard-Riolle and see him pointing to me. An extraordinary incident then occurs: the Advocate-General, turning to the jury, adds: "She was the author of the crime; and finding some one, rather a woman than a man, in her more or less immediate _entourage_, she summoned that woman, or she summoned that man, relying on his or her silence. If it had been possible for the law to seize the one or the other, we should have had them arrested. But we do not think we had enough proofs to know and to say: 'It is this, or that one....'

Gentlemen, you must accept the responsibility of a sentence as I accept that of accusing, I hand you the sword of justice, trusting that you will return a verdict both wise and firm."

I am bewildered.... There is a general uproar. The whole court rises....

I can see Mariette gesticulating frantically, at one end of the room. It is clear that the Advocate-General meant Mariette and Alexandra, her son.... But both have been called as witnesses, both have been fully exonerated by M. Leydet and afterwards by M. Andre. Is all this a ghastly farce, then!

Maitre Aubin rises as if shot up by a spring, and thunders: "You are too honest, _Monsieur l'Avocat-General_, not to reply to the question I am now going to ask you: I wish to know whether in the suggestions you have just made, you were hinting at Mariette Wolff or her son?"

The court rings with applause; barristers and journalists climb on the benches and tables. I look at M. Trouard-Riolle.... He does not reply to my counsel, but makes a wide, evasive gesture, and turns to the President, who adjourns the sitting....

Hands seize my arms, and helped by the guards, I leave the Court.

_Sat.u.r.day, November 13th_, 1909, Noon. The final hearing, the end of my trial; at least, I hope so, as I stumble into the dock a.s.sisted by the guards who softly whisper words of encouragement. The atmosphere is stifling. I can hardly see, but I can feel that the Court contains far more people than usual. I sink on to my bench. The President notices that the foreman of the jury, M. Poupard, is not there, and inquires as to the cause of his absence. One of the jurors says he has heard that the foreman is ill. The sitting is adjourned.

1 P.M. I am led back to my bench. M. de Valles reads a telegram from the absent foreman: "I am ill. Have me replaced. Poupard." Doctor Socquet is sent to see whether the foreman will soon be well enough to come, and once more the sitting is adjourned.

2.30 P.M. The bell again. For the third time I enter the dock. The judges appear. Doctor Socquet says that the foreman was taken ill on the previous night and is suffering from bronchitis, he is unable to serve on the jury. A new juror who has been present at all hearings is sworn.

And now dead silence pervades the Court. Mariette walks to the witnesses' bar: "I have heard," she says, in a loud blunt manner, "that my son and I have been called murderers.... I demand an apology."

The President answers that she has not been formally designated by the Advocate-General, declares the incident closed, and tells Mariette to withdraw.

Maitre Aubin rises and begins his speech for the defence.