My Memoirs Part 49

"To my husband."

"At what date?"

"I don't remember!..." I then explained that M. Steinheil and I always wrote to each other when we did not agree on some point, 'so as to avoid discussions and scenes....' And M. Andre thus led me to state that my husband and I were not on the best of terms, and that I did not love him.

I meant, of course, that there was no question of pa.s.sion between us; but the sentence was written... "I did not love my husband," and these words became one of the greatest arguments against me, one of the proofs of my guilt.... You did not love your husband, therefore you killed him!

Having achieved this momentous victory, M. Andre proceeded, in the most aggressive tone, to interrogate me about my "friends," but took good care not to question me about the Attorney-General or President Faure.

And as Maitre Aubin made signs to remind me of his warnings, I did not mention them.

After that, the examining magistrate put to me endless questions about my jewels.... I have explained at length all about them to the reader, and need not go into the matter again. Nor need I reproduce here the whole of the _Instruction_. Several parts of it have already been quoted, and I intend quoting the last episode of this atrocious martyrdom in full.

From time to time M. Andre ceased questioning me, and tried by little dramatic interludes to throw me off my balance.

During the very first hour of the first _Instruction_ he abruptly turned to me and exclaimed fiercely: "Your veil is down; why is your veil down?... It is down because you want to hide your face, it is down because you are guilty!... Raise that veil at once, raise it, I say!..."

Another time, he rose, bent forward towards me, and shouted: "You are the a.s.sa.s.sin!"... I rose in my turn, and, completely losing control of myself, I cried back: "It is you who are the a.s.sa.s.sin! You are murdering my daughter and me!"

He was furious. "I'll have you arrested!" he shouted.

"I'm arrested already," was my obvious reply. He made a violent gesture, went into the next room, and banged the door.

M. Andre invariably sought refuge in the next room, whenever I had the better of him.

He smoked cigarette after cigarette during my _Instruction_, and blew the smoke in my direction. It was so obvious an impertinence, and he showed such satisfaction at my impatience, that one day I did not reply to his question.

"Why don't you answer?" he exclaimed triumphantly. "Is it that you realise that it is no longer any use struggling against all the evidence that reveals your guilt?"

I merely replied: "I cannot speak on account of the smoke, _Monsieur_."

M. Andre continued smoking, but henceforth blew the smoke in a different direction.

"It is really amazing..." he said to me one day. "Can't you see that, if you were not guilty, you would ask your whole family, your friends, to visit you at Saint-Lazare! You are ashamed, because you are a criminal!"

Such words hurt beyond description, but I managed to reply:

"Monsieur, Marguerite j.a.py does not receive her friends in a prison-parlour."

M. Simon, my three counsel and the guards, nearly clapped their hands.

Another time, he suddenly placed under my eyes photographs of the bodies of my husband and my mother, as they had been found on the morning after the crime.... I have been told that all I said was: "Poor mother, poor Adolphe; at any rate, they probably did not suffer much, they must have died very quickly... there is no expression of agony on their faces. I wish I too had died that night."

M. Andre tore the photographs from my hands; his dramatic move had not had the result he expected.

The most extraordinary incident--I could say comical, had the circ.u.mstances not been so tragic--during that eventful and harrowing period, took place towards the end of the _Instruction_.

M. Andre, haunted by the thought of my guilt or rather by the thought that he must find me guilty, stood up and suddenly exclaimed in his usual hoa.r.s.e and angry voice, and underlining, as it were, his every word with threatening gestures: "Yes, you are guilty! I tell you that you have strangled your own husband and your own mother, with your own hands, your powerful a.s.sa.s.sin's hands!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: M. ANDRe, MY EXAMINING MAGISTRATE

"You are the a.s.sa.s.sin!"]

Now I have unusually small hands, and scores of times Bonnat and Henner have sketched or painted them, and made amusing remarks about "those ridiculously tiny hands." I stretched out my arms, and placed my hands under the very eyes of the examining magistrate.

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. Andre 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!"

M. Simon, the _greffier_, had ceased writing, Maitre Aubin was smiling.

I could hear the two guards chuckle, and M. Andre, utterly routed, left the Cabinet, and for a long while we heard him walking up and down in the next room.

Each _Instruction_ lasted from noon until seven or eight in the evening.

I was then taken back to the _Depot_, 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 Leonide, 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, coa.r.s.e, 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 b.u.t.ter, 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 Leonide 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.

In spite of Sister Leonide's care, of my daughter's solicitude, and of the devotion of my three counsel, that _Instruction_ was using up the little vitality and strength I still possessed. It was dreadful to have to reply to all kinds of insidious and perfidious questions, for seven or eight hours at a time, especially as the questioner never once ceased to make it perfectly obvious that he considered me a murderess, a murderess without even an accomplice... until the very end, when, after reading the various experts' reports, he admitted that I had probably been a.s.sisted.

M. Andre 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 acc.u.mulate 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!"...