Chapter M: Boucard (the Examining Magistrate) and the Doctors Leaving (1)

THE PRIVATE HOSPITAL WHERE M. CALMETTE DIED.

M. Boucard is in front]

The first feeling in Paris when the crime became generally known was one of stupefaction. The special editions of the evening papers appeared while Paris was at dinner, were snatched with wild eagerness from the hands of the hawkers, and nothing else was talked of all that evening. Gradually, as details became known, a popular wave of indignation against the murderess became so fierce that the police, informed of it, took special measures to preserve order, and numbers of police with revolvers in the great leather cases which are worn in emergencies appeared in the streets. As a proof of the hold which the drama took immediately on the imagination of the public, it may be mentioned that the theatres were almost empty that evening and that in each entr’acte the audience rushed out of the theatre altogether to get further news, or if a few remained, they waited in the auditorium for news to appear on the screens usually devoted to advertisements, instead of strolling about the theatre corridors as they usually do. An immense crowd gathered round the police-station in the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre, where Madame Caillaux had been taken. The crowd, composed for the most part of riffraff—for the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre is a favourite haunt of the very worst kind of criminals—formed a surging mass in front of the police-station with which the strong force of police found it difficult to cope. Barely a quarter of an hour after the police commissioner, Monsieur Carpin, had begun to question Madame Caillaux, her husband arrived at the police-station in a taxicab. He was recognized and hooted by the crowd, but though his usually ruddy face was deadly pale he gave no other sign that he had noticed this hostility. The only man who did not recognize Monsieur Caillaux was the policeman on duty at the door. He had orders to allow no one to pass, and barred his passage. “I am the Minister of Finance,” said Monsieur Caillaux, and pushing past the man, who stood and stared at him, he added, “You might as well salute me.” Other Ministers and politicians of note had forced their way into the police-station, and a number of journalists were among them. Stories of all sorts circulated, one to the effect that Monsieur and Madame Caillaux had had a stormy scene, and that the Minister had reproached his wife bitterly for what she had done; another, which proved to be true later on, that he had telephoned to the Prime Minister, and resigned his portfolio and his seat in the Cabinet. Monsieur Carpin, the police commissioner, received some of the journalists in his office, and gave them a short report of what had occurred. “I saw Madame Caillaux at once when she came,” he said. “She was perfectly self-possessed, but complained of feeling cold.” “You are aware,” she said, “of the campaign which Monsieur Gaston Calmette was waging against my husband. I went to some one, whose name I prefer not to mention, for advice how to put a stop to this campaign. He told me that it could not be stopped. A letter was published. I knew that other letters were to be published too. This morning I bought a revolver, and this afternoon I went to the office of the _Figaro_. I had no intention of killing Monsieur Calmette. This I affirm, and I regret my act deeply.” I quote this first statement of Madame Caillaux as Monsieur Carpin repeated it to the journalists in his office on the evening on which the crime was committed, and as the _Figaro_ and other newspapers reproduced it word for word next morning. As will be seen later, these first statements which the prisoner made are of vital importance. It was now nine o’clock. The journalists were told that Monsieur Boucard, the examining magistrate, had given orders for Madame Caillaux to be locked up in St. Lazare prison, and were asked to leave the police-station. The crowd outside in the streets had in some way learned that Madame Caillaux was going, and became denser and more menacing. The officials inside the police-station realized that there was danger to the safety of their prisoner, and heard the cries from the mob in the street below against the Minister of Finance. These were if anything more threatening than those which Madame Caillaux’s name provoked. All of a sudden a yell rose from below. “He’s getting out by the back way! Down with the murderer! Death to Caillaux!” The police-station has two entrances, one, the main one, in the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre, the other leading through a passage and a grocer’s shop out into a little side street, the Rue de la Grange Batelière. There was a wild stampede round to this little shop, and the first of the crowd to arrive there were in time to see Monsieur Caillaux and the Minister of Commerce, Monsieur Malvy, jump into a taxicab at the door. The cab got away amid a storm of shouts and imprecations. “Death to Caillaux! Murderer! Démission!—Resign! Resign!” Madame Caillaux, under the escort of two high police officials, had been smuggled out of the police-station through the grocery shop and taken away in another cab a few moments before her husband left, but the crowd had missed her. She was taken directly to St. Lazare prison, where she has been since, and locked into _pistole_, or cell No. 12, where Madame Steinheil, Madame Humbert, and other prisoners of notoriety awaited trial in their day.

On the morning of Monday, March 16, Madame Caillaux had held a conference at her house in the Rue Alphonse de Neuville with the President of the Civil Court, Monsieur Monier. It was to Monsieur Monier she referred when she told Monsieur Carpin and Monsieur Boucard, the examining magistrate, that she had been informed by a person, whom she preferred not to mention, that there was no means of putting a stop to the _Figaro_ campaign against her husband. A few moments after Monsieur Monier had left the Rue Alphonse de Neuville Madame Caillaux was called up on the telephone by Monsieur Pierre de Fouquières of the Protocol. There was to be a dinner-party, in honour of the President of the Republic, at the Italian Embassy in Paris that evening, and Monsieur de Fouquières rang Madame Caillaux up on the telephone to know at what time exactly she and her husband would arrive at the Embassy. She told him that they would be there punctually at a quarter-past eight, and reminded Monsieur de Fouquières, at the same time, that she was counting on his help to place her guests at an important dinner which was to be given at the Ministry of Finance on March 23. This dinner of course never took place. After her conversation with Monsieur de Fouquières, Madame Caillaux telephoned to her hairdresser, whom she ordered to call and do her hair at seven o’clock for the dinner at the Italian Embassy. At eleven o’clock that morning, her manicure called, and Madame Caillaux then drove to her dentist, Dr. Gaillard, whom, on leaving, she arranged to see again on the Wednesday at half-past two. From the dentist’s Madame Caillaux drove to the Ministry of Finance, to fetch her husband. On her way back in the car with him to the Rue Alphonse de Neuville, Madame Caillaux told her husband of her conference with the President of the Civil Tribunal, Monsieur Monier, that morning, and of his declaration that there was no legal means to put an end to the campaign in the _Figaro_ against the Minister of Finance. Monsieur Caillaux is a hot-tempered man. He flew into a violent rage, and declared to his wife “Very well then! If there’s nothing to be done I’ll go and smash his face.” From my personal knowledge of Monsieur Joseph Caillaux, from my personal experience of his attitude when anything annoys him, I consider it quite probable that his rage would cause him to lose quite sufficient control of himself to speak in this manner under the circumstances. On one occasion, not very long ago, Monsieur Caillaux received me in his office at the Ministry of Finance and spoke of his causes of complaint against the British Ambassador, Sir Francis Bertie. Although he was talking to an English journalist about the Ambassador of his king his language on that occasion was so unmeasured, and his anger was expressed with such freedom, that in the interview I published after our conversation I was obliged to suppress many of the things he said. In fact when he read some of them in the interview which I took to the Ministry to show him before I had it telephoned to London, Monsieur Caillaux himself suggested their suppression. Madame Caillaux knew, she has said afterwards, that her husband’s anger and violence of temper were such that his threat was by no means a vague one. She has declared that it was this threat of Monsieur Caillaux’s which gave her the first idea of taking her husband’s place, and going to inflict personal chastisement on the editor of the _Figaro_. It is a truism that small occurrences often have results out of all proportion to their own importance. That morning Monsieur and Madame Caillaux made a very bad luncheon. Madame Caillaux, who has been under medical treatment for some time, ate nothing at all, and the bad luncheon threw her husband into another rage. He was so angry that they almost quarrelled, and Madame Caillaux, to pacify him, promised that she would dismiss the cook there and then, go to a registry office that afternoon, and secure another cook for the next day. Monsieur Caillaux went back to the Ministry of Finance immediately after luncheon, and his wife, who had an engagement for tea at the Hôtel Ritz in the afternoon, rang for her maid to put her into an afternoon dress. She says that she felt very ill while she was dressing, and very worried by her husband’s outburst with regard to the _Figaro_ campaign against him. She felt that she must do all she could, she has declared, to prevent the publication of certain letters which she believed, rightly or wrongly, that it was Monsieur Calmette’s intention to publish in the _Figaro_. At half-past two that afternoon, before going out, Madame Caillaux was, she has told the examining magistrate, taken ill in her room and obliged to lie down, and she described with great vividness a sort of vision which she declares passed like a picture on the cinematograph before her eyes. “I knew my husband to be a good swordsman, and a good pistol shot,” she said. “I saw him killing Monsieur Calmette, I saw his arrest, I saw him in the Assize Court standing in the dock. All the terrible consequences of the ghastly drama which I foresaw passed before my eyes, and little by little I made up my mind to take my husband’s place, and I decided to go and see Monsieur Calmette that same evening.”

As I have already explained, Madame Caillaux knew, as every Parisian knows, that the most likely time to find a newspaper editor in his office was after five o’clock, and, as we know, she had promised to be at the Italian Embassy at a quarter-past eight and had telephoned to her hairdresser to go to her and dress her hair in the Rue Alphonse de Neuville at seven. It is fairly clear therefore, that when she left her house at three she had no very definite idea of what she was going to do. At three o’clock Madame Caillaux left home—the home to which neither she nor her husband has returned since—and drove in her grey motor-car to a registry office, where she engaged a new cook for the next day. She then drove to the sale-rooms of the armourer Monsieur Gastinne-Renette in the Avenue d’Antin. Even then, she declares, she had no intention of killing the editor of the _Figaro_, but intended to ask him to cease his campaign against her husband, to refrain from publishing letters which she was convinced he intended to publish, and in the event of his refusal, to “show him of what she was capable” (these words are a quotation from her statement to the examining magistrate, Monsieur Boucard), and fire her revolver not to kill, but to wound him. I wish it to be understood, clearly, that I am quoting the foregoing from the evidence of Madame Caillaux herself. I do not wish in any way to comment on this evidence. It is my object merely to try, to the best of my endeavour, to place before the public the state of this wretched woman’s mind immediately before the crime which she committed, and by so doing to allow my readers to form their own judgment of her motives. Madame Caillaux was well known to Monsieur Gastinne-Renette, who for that matter knows everybody in Paris society. She told the armourer that she would be motoring a good deal, by herself, between Paris and her husband’s constituency of Mamers, during Monsieur Caillaux’s coming electoral campaign, and that she wanted a revolver for her own protection. The first weapon which was shown her did not satisfy her. It was expensive, costing £3 19_s._ 6_d._, and she hurt her finger, she says, when she pulled the trigger. She was then shown a Browning which cost only £2 4_s._, and worked more easily. She went downstairs to the shooting-gallery below Monsieur Gastinne-Renette’s sale-rooms, and tried her new acquisition, firing six shots from it. By a tragic coincidence her shots struck the metal figure in almost exactly the same places as the bullets she fired afterwards struck her victim. She then put six bullets into the loader, and she told the examining magistrate that her first intention was to put only two cartridges in, but that the salesman was watching her and she thought he might think it strange if she only loaded her revolver partially. At this point in Madame Caillaux’s examination, Monsieur Boucard interrupted her. “If you did this,” said the magistrate, “you must surely have made your mind up to murder Monsieur Calmette?” “Not at all,” said Madame Caillaux. “The thought in my mind was that if he refused to stop his campaign I would wound him.” From the armourer’s, Madame Caillaux drove home again to the Rue Alphonse de Neuville, where she wrote a note to her husband. In this note, which is now in the hands of the lawyers, she wrote, “You said that you would smash his face, and I will not let you sacrifice yourself for me. France and the Republic need you. I will do it for you.” I have not seen this letter myself. My quotation from it is taken from the report in the French papers of March 25 of the examination of Madame Caillaux by Monsieur Boucard. She gave this letter to her daughter’s English governess Miss Baxter, telling her that she was to give it to Monsieur Caillaux at seven o’clock if she had not returned home by then. It seems only fair to believe that Madame Caillaux at that time, while she foresaw the likelihood of a stormy interview with the editor of the _Figaro_, did not intend committing murder. Madame Caillaux’s engagement for tea with friends was at the Hôtel Ritz, but she did not go there to keep it. She arrived at the _Figaro_ office exactly at a quarter-past five, and she waited until a little after six o’clock for Monsieur Calmette to come in. When she heard that he had arrived, she asked one of the men in uniform to tell him that a lady whom he knew, but who did not wish to give her name, wanted to speak to him. “He will only receive you,” said the man, “if you let him know your name.” Madame Caillaux then, as I have already said, put her visiting card in an envelope, and sent it in to Monsieur Calmette. In her evidence to the examining magistrate Madame Caillaux stated that she heard Monsieur Calmette a few moments afterwards say aloud, “Let Madame Caillaux come in.” This statement of the prisoner is flatly contradicted by the man who took her card in to the editor of the _Figaro_, and by Monsieur Paul Bourget, who was with Monsieur Calmette when Madame Caillaux’s card was brought to him. It is contradicted also by a gentleman, who was in the waiting-room with Madame Caillaux, waiting to see another member of the _Figaro_ staff, and by a friend who was there with him. Madame Caillaux, however, declared in her evidence to Monsieur Boucard that she heard Monsieur Calmette speak her name aloud, and that she was furiously angry because her identity had been made known. This is Madame Caillaux’s own account of the crime itself. “The man opened the door to usher me into Monsieur Calmette’s office, and as I walked to his room from the visiting-room, I had slipped my revolver, which was in my muff, out of its case. I held the weapon in my right hand, inside the muff, when I entered Monsieur Calmette’s private office. He was putting his hat on an armchair and said to me, ‘Bonjour madame.’ I replied, ‘Bonjour Monsieur,’ and added, ‘No doubt you can guess the object of my visit.’ ‘Please sit down,’ he said.” Madame Caillaux declares that she lost her head entirely when she found herself facing her husband’s mortal enemy. “I did not think of asking him anything,” she said. “I fired, and fired again. The mouth of my revolver pointed downwards.” This statement is undoubtedly true, for the first two bullets fired were found in the bookcase quite near the ground. Madame Caillaux says that she went on firing without knowing what she did. Two of her bullets inflicted mortal wounds, and though everything was done that science could do, her victim died a few hours later.

Monsieur Caillaux had spent the greater part of the afternoon in the Chamber of Deputies, and his first news of the crime, which his wife had committed, reached him at the Ministry of Finance. He had returned to his office there to sign some necessary papers before returning home to dress for the dinner at the Italian Embassy, and he did not therefore receive his wife’s note until much later in the evening, after the commission of the crime. Monsieur Caillaux, whatever his faults may be, is a strong man and a plucky one. He turned ashy pale when he heard what had happened, but said nothing further than to ask for a cab, and without a moment’s loss of time he went as fast as the cab could take him to the police-station in the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre. There he was at once allowed to see his wife. Before leaving the police-station Monsieur Caillaux telephoned to his chief, Monsieur Doumergue, the Prime Minister, resigning his position in the Cabinet as Minister of Finance. He told the Prime Minister then, that nothing would induce him to reconsider his resignation, and that he would devote himself exclusively to his wife’s defence, and take no further part in the political life of the country. The news of the murder was not definitely known at the Italian Embassy until fairly late in the evening, although all the guests were surprised at the absence of Monsieur Caillaux and his wife. Monsieur Poincaré was the first to be told the news, and left the Embassy immediately, followed by all the other guests. A little later in the evening, at about ten o’clock, Monsieur Doumergue summoned his colleagues to a Cabinet Council which was held at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. The Council lasted from ten o’clock till after midnight. Just before the Ministers separated the news of Monsieur Gaston Calmette’s death reached them over the telephone wire. The Ministers’ first thought was to save the political situation. They realized the grave dangers of a Cabinet crisis at this moment, and dispatched Monsieur Malvy, the Minister of Commerce, to Monsieur Caillaux to endeavour to induce him to reconsider his decision to resign. Monsieur Caillaux refused to reconsider it, and Monsieur Doumergue himself failed, though he tried hard, to get him to withdraw his resignation and to remain in office. Even then the colleagues in the Cabinet of Monsieur Caillaux refused to accept his resignation definitely, and the Council adjourned until the Tuesday without coming to any definite decision. On Tuesday, realizing the political impossibility of his retaining his portfolio, even if he could have been persuaded to retain it, the Government decided that the Minister for Home Affairs, Monsieur René Renoult, should become Minister of Finance in Monsieur Caillaux’s stead, that the Minister of Commerce, Monsieur Malvy, should succeed him at the Home Office, and that the Under Secretary of State for Home Affairs, Monsieur Raoul Péret, should take the portfolio of Commerce. These decisions were made known on the morning following the murder, the morning of Tuesday March 17, and the necessary decrees were signed before luncheon by President Poincaré, enabling a full Cabinet to meet the Chamber of Deputies that same afternoon. But that same afternoon a storm burst in the Chamber with a violence which shook France as she has not been shaken by a political upheaval for many years.

In the course of his campaign against Monsieur Caillaux in the _Figaro_, Monsieur Gaston Calmette had, on several occasions, spoken of undue interference by members of the Government with the course of justice in the Rochette affair. I shall endeavour later in this book to attempt to give my readers some explanation of the broad lines of the “Affaire Rochette,” though it is so complicated, and the intricacy of its details such, that very few Parisians, even, understand them, and even the parliamentary commission which has sat on the case has never been able to unravel it to the satisfaction and comprehension of the man in the street. Monsieur Calmette spoke in these articles of his of a letter written and signed by Monsieur Victor Fabre, the Procureur Général, or Public Prosecutor, in which Monsieur Fabre was said to have accused members of the Government of interference with the course of justice, and to have stated that influence had been brought to bear on him to postpone the Rochette trial. This story had always been denied hotly by the parties most interested. At five o’clock in the afternoon of March 17, the day after the murder of Monsieur Calmette by Madame Caillaux, Monsieur Delahaye, a member of the Opposition, climbed the steps of the rostrum and placed this motion before the House: _The Chamber, deeply moved by the crime which was committed yesterday, and which apparently was committed in order to prevent divulgations of a nature likely to cast a slur on a magistrate who was acting by order, invites the Government either to dismiss this magistrate from his post or to give him the permission necessary to enable him to take legal action against those who accuse him_.

The Chamber had been half empty when Monsieur Delahaye rose. It filled in a moment with excited members who poured into their seats from the lobbies. Monsieur Gaston Doumergue, and nearly all the members of the Cabinet, took their places on the Government bench, and when Monsieur Delahaye began his speech the House was in that tremor of excitement which is the invariable prelude to a big sensation. Nobody knew, however, with one or two exceptions, what the sensation was going to be, and probably the members of the Government knew least of all. In an excited speech Monsieur Delahaye referred first of all to an open letter which had been written by a member of the Chamber, Monsieur Thalamas, to Madame Caillaux immediately after her arrest. Monsieur Thalamas, whose letter I subjoin in a footnote,[1] had written as no decent man had any right to express himself on the commission of the murder, and those members of the Chamber who remained unblinded by political prejudice were fully aware of this. After reading the letter, the reading of which was interrupted constantly, Monsieur Delahaye declared that Monsieur Calmette had had the much-talked-about letter, written three years ago, by the Public Prosecutor in his possession, that he had intended to publish it in the _Figaro_, and that it made a direct accusation against Monsieur Monis who had been Prime Minister at the time that it was written and who was now, on March 17, Minister of Marine. Monsieur Delahaye addressed a question directly to Monsieur Monis. “Permit me to ask you,” he said, “whether this letter exists or not, whether you knew it, and whether or not it states that you gave orders to Judge Bidault de L’Isle, through the Public Prosecutor, Monsieur Fabre, to order the postponement of the Rochette affair?” There was a tumult of excitement in the House. The excitement centred of course round Monsieur Monis, who had risen to reply, but who was prevented by his friends from speaking. Altercations arose on all sides, and in the midst of the tumult Monsieur Monis rose in his seat and made signs that he insisted on being heard. A deadly silence succeeded the uproar. “The first question you asked me,” said Monsieur Monis in a loud and clear voice, “is whether I knew of the document to which you have alluded, or whether I knew what was contained in it. My answer is No. You asked me whether I gave orders, or caused orders to be given, for the adjournment of the Rochette trial. My answer to that question is emphatically No. And I do more than deny these statements: I call on the President of the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into the Rochette case, to read to the Chamber the evidence given before the commission by Judge Bidault de L’Isle. That evidence is in complete conformity with what I have just said.” There was a roar of applause from the Left, and Monsieur Jaurès, the President of the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into the Rochette case, rose in his seat, and made this important declaration: “Judge Bidault de L’Isle affirmed on his honour, as a man and as a magistrate, that he had never received any order of the kind. But it appears impossible to me that, if it is in existence, we should not be informed about the existence of this document. Does it exist, or does it not exist? If it has disappeared let us be told so.” The declaration of Monsieur Jaurès was responsible for more uproar in the House, in the middle of which Monsieur Delahaye was heard to declare that the declaration of Monsieur Fabre had existed, and that Monsieur Calmette, who had obtained possession of it, always carried it about with him. Monsieur Delahaye declared further that he had seen it, that Monsieur Briand, who was Minister of Justice in the Monis Cabinet, had received it when he became Minister of Justice, and that the document confirmed the accusation of Ministerial intervention, which Monsieur Calmette had published in the _Figaro_. Monsieur Doumergue followed Monsieur Delahaye in the rostrum. The Prime Minister, who was evidently much affected, declared his horror of these accusations against members of the Cabinet. “I have read the official summary of the work of the Commission of Inquiry,” he said, “and it states that Monsieur Bidault de L’Isle declared that he had been under no pressure whatever, and that he had adjourned the Rochette trial of his own free will. Monsieur Delahaye has declared,” said the Prime Minister, “that the letter he saw was a copy of the original. What is the value of this copy? The Government is perfectly prepared to favour a fresh Inquiry, perfectly ready to bring a clear light to bear on this question, but we want proof. Where is the proof?” And the Prime Minister sat down amid a yell of applause from his political friends. Then the bombshell fell. Monsieur Barthou stepped into the rostrum, declared that the declaration of the Public Prosecutor Monsieur Fabre was in his possession, and with one of those dramatic gestures of which Frenchmen have the secret, produced a faded sheet of paper from his pocket, unfolded it, slapped it on the desk in front of him, and cried “And here it is!” (“Ce document, le voici!”) “This statement,” he said, written by Monsieur Victor Fabre, “was handed to Monsieur Briand when he was Minister of Justice. When I succeeded Monsieur Briand he handed it over to me. I refused to allow it to become known, but I consider that the time has come for its production in this house.” And in a clear voice Monsieur Barthou read the following aloud:

Le mercredi 2 mars 1911, j’ai été mandé par M. Monis,
Président du Conseil.

Il voulait me parler de l’affaire Rochette.

Il me dit que le gouvernement tenait à ce qu’elle ne
vînt pas devant la Cour le 27 avril, date fixée depuis
longtemps; qu’elle pouvait créer des embarras au ministre
des finances, au moment où celui-ci avait déjà les
affaires des liquidations des congrégations religieuses,
celles du Crédit Foncier et autres du même genre.

Le président du Conseil me donna l’ordre d’obtenir
du président de la Chambre correctionnelle la remise
de cette affaire après les vacances judiciaires
d’août-septembre.

J’ai protesté avec énergie. J’ai indiqué combien il
m’était pénible de remplir une pareille mission.

J’ai supplié qu’on laissât l’affaire Rochette suivre son
cours normal. Le président du Conseil maintint ses ordres
et m’invita à aller le revoir pour lui rendre compte.

J’étais indigné. Je sentais bien que c’était les amis de
Rochette qui avaient monté ce coup invraisemblable.

Le vendredi 24 mars Monsieur M.B. ... vint au Parquet.
Il me déclara que, cédant aux sollicitations de son ami
le ministre des finances, il allait se porter malade et
demander la remise après les grandes vacances de son ami
Rochette.

Je lui répondis qu’il avait l’air fort bien portant, mais
qu’il ne m’appartenait pas de discuter les raisons de
santé personnelle invoquées par un avocat, et que je ne
pouvais, le cas échéant, que m’en rapporter à la sagesse
du Président.

Il écrivit au magistrat.

Celui-ci, que je n’avais pas vu et que je ne voulais pas
voir, lui répondit par un refus.

M^e Maurice Bernard s’en montra fort irrité. Il vint récriminer
auprès de moi et me fit comprendre, par des allusions à peine
voilées, qu’il était au courant de tout.

Que devais-je faire?

Après un violent combat intérieur, après une véritable
crise dont fut témoin, seul témoin d’ailleurs, mon ami et
substitut Bloch-Laroque, je me suis décidé, contraint par
la violence morale exercée sur moi, à obéir.

J’ai fait venir Monsieur le président Bidault de L’Isle.

Je lui ai exposé avec émotion la situation où je me
trouvais. Finalement, M. Bidault de L’Isle consentit, par
affection pour moi, à la remise demandée.

Le soir même, c’est-à-dire le jeudi 30 mars, je suis allé
chez M. le président du Conseil et lui ai dit ce que
j’avais fait.

Il a paru fort content.

Je l’étais beaucoup moins.

Dans l’antichambre j’avais vu M. du Mesnil,
directeur du _Rappel_, journal favorable à Rochette et
m’outrageant fréquemment. Il venait, sans doute, demander
si je m’étais soumis.

Jamais je n’ai subi une telle humiliation.

Ce 31 mars 1911.
V. FABRE.

_Annexe._ [This was not read in the Chamber.]

Le jour même de la réunion, pendant la suspension
d’audience, des conseillers qui siégeaient à côté de M.
Bidault de L’Isle se sont élevés en termes véhéments
contre la forfaiture qu’on venait de lui imposer.

Pourquoi ne les a-t-on pas entendus à la commission
d’enquête?

On aurait pu, par exemple, interroger M. Francois-Poncet
qui n’a dissimulé à personne, ni son indignation ni son
dégoût pour les manœuvres inqualifiables imposées par le
président du Conseil au Procureur Général.

For English readers to realize the full importance of this document I must explain that the Public Prosecutor or Procureur Général ranks as a Government official, and holds almost the same position as a judge holds in England, with the difference that he does not judge but prosecutes. For influence to be brought to bear on such an official by members of the Government is much the same thing as though Cabinet Ministers in England had ordered the Director of Public Prosecutions and the judge who was to try Mr. Jabez Balfour to adjourn the trial for six or seven months for political reasons. Supposing such a thing to have been possible, and Jabez Balfour to have disappeared from England so that he never came up for trial at all, one can imagine the outcry which would have been raised. Here in plain English, as plain and as simple English as I can summon to my help, is the translation of Monsieur Fabre’s accusing document:

On Wednesday March 2, 1911, I was summoned by Monsieur
Monis, the Prime Minister. He wished to talk to me about
the Rochette affair. He told me that the Government did
not wish the case to come before the courts on April 27,
which date had been fixed a long time ago. He told me
that it might create trouble for the Minister of Finance
at a moment when he had already on hand the liquidation
of the religious congregations, the Crédit Foncier case,
and others of the same kind. The Prime Minister ordered
me to induce the President of the Correctional Court
(Judge Bidault de L’Isle) to adjourn this affair till the
end of the legal vacation August-September. I protested
with energy. I pointed out how painful it was for me
to carry out such a mission. I begged (the Premier) to
allow the Rochette case to follow its normal course. The
Premier adhered to his order, and told me to see him
again and give him news of my mission. I was deeply hurt
and indignant. I had no doubt that Rochette’s friends
had organized this incredible _coup_. On Friday March
24 Mr. M. B. ... (Rochette’s lawyer, Maître Maurice
Bernard) came to my office. He stated that, yielding to
the solicitations of his friend the Minister of Finance,
(Monsieur Caillaux) he was going to plead illness and
asked for the adjournment of his friend Rochette’s trial.
I replied to that, that he looked perfectly well, but
that it was no part of my duty to question a plea of
personal ill-health made by a lawyer, and that I should
simply refer the matter to the wisdom of the judge. He
wrote to the judge. Judge Bidault de L’Isle, whom I
had not seen and did not want to see, met his request
with a refusal. Maître Maurice Bernard showed great
irritation at this refusal. He called on me again,
used recriminatory language, and made me understand by
means of thinly veiled allusions that he was perfectly
informed of everything. What could I do? After much
self-communion, after a veritable crisis of mental agony
of which the witness, in fact the only witness, was my
friend and deputy, Bloch-Laroque, I decided that I must
obey the moral pressure which had been brought to bear
on me. I sent for Judge Bidault de L’Isle. I laid before
him, with emotion, the situation in which I had been
placed. Eventually Judge Bidault de L’Isle consented
from affection for me to the adjournment which had been
demanded. That same evening, that is to say, Thursday,
March 30, I went to the Prime Minister and told him what
I had done. He appeared very pleased. I was much less
pleased. In the ante-chamber I had seen Monsieur Du
Mesnil, the managing editor of the _Rappel_, a newspaper
which was favourable to Rochette and was in the habit of
attacking me frequently. He had come, no doubt, to ask
the Prime Minister whether I had allowed myself to be
coerced. I have never undergone such humiliation before.

_March 31, 1911._ V. FABRE.

_Annexe._

On the day of the meeting during a suspension the
councillors (that is to say the two judges) who sat
on the bench with Judge Bidault de L’Isle expressed
themselves very vehemently against the pressure which had
been brought to bear on them. Why were they not heard by
the Commission of Inquiry? For instance it would have
been easy to question Monsieur François-Poncet, who had
taken no pains to conceal either his indignation or his
disgust at the unqualifiable manœuvres which the Prime
Minister had forced on the Public Prosecutor.

The reading of this statement from the rostrum of the Chamber was followed within forty-eight hours by the resignation of Monsieur Monis from the Cabinet, and its immediate result was the resumption of the work of the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry which had sat on the Rochette case. This commission (over which of course Monsieur Jaurès presided, as he had presided over the others) conducted the inquiry, as all such inquiries invariably are conducted in France, on political lines. The sessions of the commission did not pass off without the resignation of some of its members, the public was inclined to shrug its shoulders at the leniency of its examination of past Ministers of the State, and the wording of its verdict when delivered was a farce, not altogether unworthy of the date on which the Paris morning papers published it, the first of April. The Parliamentary Commission could find no stronger words to stigmatize the situation described in Monsieur Fabre’s statement, which description the inquiry proved to be true, than “a deplorable abuse of influence.” The phrase has become a joke in Paris now, and is in popular use on the boulevards. The Chamber of Deputies, however, before the close of the Parliamentary session, found other words to express the nation’s displeasure, and after a session which lasted from two o’clock in the afternoon of April 3 till two o’clock in the morning of April 4, the Chamber of Deputies adjourned for the Easter holidays, having voted the following order of the day:

The Chamber,

Takes note of the statements and findings of the
Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry.

_Disapproves and reprehends the abusive intervention of
financial interests in politics, and of politics in the
administration of justice._

Affirms the necessity of a law on parliamentary
incompatibility,

And with the resolution to assure, more efficaciously,
the separation of political and judicial power,

Passes to the order of the day.

The debate, of which this significant order of the day was the corollary, was not only an extremely interesting, but a very stormy one. In the course of it, a member of the Chamber challenged Monsieur Doumergue, the Prime Minister, to fight him, but the quarrel was smoothed over. Monsieur Briand, Monsieur Barthou, Monsieur Barrès, Monsieur Doumergue, and Monsieur Jaurès all took a very active part in the debate, and when the Chamber finally adjourned till June, in other words till after the general elections, the general impression was that the Doumergue Ministry would not return to power.

With this historic debate ends the first chapter of the Caillaux drama. The vibrations of a revolver shot in a newspaper office in the Rue Drouot have eddied and spread till France was set aquiver. The woman who fired the shot, the wife of the man who an hour before the shot was fired was the most powerful man in France, knew before she was taken to her cell in Saint Lazare that the first consequence of her act had been the headlong downfall of her husband. She must feel now like a child who has pulled up a little stone and caused an avalanche, and not only France but Europe and the whole world are wondering what may go to pieces in the wreckage.

[1] Copy of open letter sent by Monsieur Thalamas to Madame Caillaux:

MADAME,

Je n’ai pas l’honneur de vous connaître, mais je sais par expérience quelle est l’infamie de la presse immonde envers les sentiments les plus intimes et les plus sacrés, quelle guerre elle mène contre la famille, les choses privées les plus respectables, et ceux qui luttent contre les privilèges des riches et contre les menées cléricales. Vous en avez tué un. Bravo! Lorsqu’un homme en vient à se mettre ainsi en dehors de la loi morale, il n’est plus qu’un bandit. Et quand la Société ne vous fait pas justice, il n’y a plus qu’à se faire justice soi-même!

Faites de ma lettre l’usage que vous voudrez. Trouvez-y le cri de la conscience d’un honnête homme révolté, et d’un journaliste-député écœuré des procédés de ceux qui déshonorent la presse et le Parlement.

THALAMAS

P.S. Ma femme me prie de vous adresser l’expression de sa sympathie. Elle vient de faire sur votre acte un article pour la _Dépêche de Versailles_. Elle vous l’enverra demain.

_Translation_:

MADAME,

I have not the honour of your acquaintance, but I know by experience the infamy of the unclean Press towards the most intimate and most sacred sentiments, I know the war which it wages against home and family, against the intimacies of life most worthy of respect, against those who oppose the privileges of the rich, and the influence of the priests. You have killed one of them. Well done! When a man puts himself in this way outside all moral laws he is nothing but an outlaw, and when society does not do justice to him the only thing to be done is to take the law into one’s own hands.

Make whatever use you like of my letter. It is the genuine expression of the feelings of revolt of an honourable man’s conscience, the expression of the conscience of a journalist who is a member of the Chamber, and who is disgusted by the methods of those who dishonour both Press and Parliament.

THALAMAS

P.S. My wife begs me to assure you of her sympathy. She has written an article on your act for the _Dépêche de Versailles_. She will send it you to-morrow.

II

CELL NO. 12

It is a very short drive from the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre to the prison of Saint Lazare, where Madame Caillaux was taken from the police-station. She had been taken from the office of the _Figaro_ to the police-station in her own luxurious car. She drove to Saint Lazare in one of the horrible red taxicabs which have rattled for too many years about the streets of Paris, with a member of the police force in plain clothes seated beside her, another on the uncomfortable little seat opposite, and a third on the box by the driver. The prison authorities had been advised by telephone of her arrival at the prison, and arrangements had been made to put her into _pistole_ No. 12, the cell in which Louise Michel, Valentine Merelli, Madame Humbert, Madame Steinheil and many other Parisian celebrities awaited their trials. The cab drove into the courtyard of the prison and the gates closed behind it. The police handed their prisoner over, with the usual formalities, to the prison authorities, she was kept waiting while she was inscribed on the prison books, she was searched—for no prisoner escapes this formality—and was told to walk forward to a large open space between two staircases. The house of correction of Saint Lazare is a very old building, which dates from the beginning of the twelfth century. It was a hospital for lepers in 1110, and remained one till 1515, when the monks of the Order of Saint Victor took it over, and abolished the lepers’ hospital. In 1632 Saint Vincent de Paul and the priests of the order became the inmates of Saint Lazare, and in 1779 it became a house of correction and provisional and permanent detention for men. On July 13, 1789, when famine raged in Paris, the mob broke into Saint Lazare, and looted the enormous stock of food which the Lazarists were known to be keeping there. The monks were driven out, the building sacked and the store houses gutted by fire. The convent of Saint Lazare then became a State prison in which suspects were kept. It is now a prison for women. There is room for about twelve hundred prisoners, but at a pinch the old building would hold 1600. The prisoners are divided into three categories. The first consists of women who are awaiting trial, or who have been sentenced to less than a year’s imprisonment. The second division consists of girls under age who have been sentenced to confinement in a house of correction till they are twenty-one, the third division is that of unfortunates whose sentences of imprisonment are short ones. Saint Lazare prison, though of course under State control, is in practice ruled by a body of nuns who, while responsible to the authorities, have really the entire management of the enormous prison in their hands and hold the real power. It is a huge bleak wilderness of stone with echoing corridors and haunting silences, and has been sentenced to demolition for sanitary reasons for many years. But threatened buildings live long in France when they belong to the State. A modern prison, such as Fresnes in France or any of the English prisons, is a pleasure resort compared with Saint Lazare, and there is less difference between Fresnes and a cheap hydropathic than there is between the prison of Saint Lazare and the prison of Fresnes. The silence, the darkness, the cold, damp, and dirt are perhaps the worst of its discomforts, but I have been told by women who have been imprisoned there that the mental and physical torture of the months in which they waited trial surpassed anything that could be imagined. Within an hour after her arrival Madame Caillaux ceased to wear her name and became a number—No. 12. The number she received is considered a favour, for cell No. 12 is the most spacious of all the cells in Saint Lazare.

In the large open space between the two stairways is a high chair, almost a throne, on which sits Sister Léonide, the chief superintendent of the prison nuns. She is a woman of about forty. A handsome woman with a stern set face. The drawing of her in this volume was done specially for me by the well-known artist of St. Lazare, Monsieur Albert Morand. Monsieur Morand is one of the few men who have been authorized to make drawings of St. Lazare, and his work has the honour of a special place in the Carnavalet Museum. His drawings which are reproduced in this volume are probably unique. The nickname which the prisoners give Sœur Léonide is “Bostock,” after the famous American lion tamer, who, in his day, was a celebrity in Paris. Her severity is not more remarkable than is her power of quelling the first signs of mutiny among the prisoners by a mere glance, and it was the quick-witted appreciation of this power of the eye which gave her her name. Sister Léonide made a sign to one of the two women who stood by her. The woman, a prison attendant who goes by the ironically prison-given name of a _soubrette_, opened a door and motioned to No. 12 to walk straight on down a half-lighted misty corridor, painted a muddy brown. This corridor seems endless. It is like a street in a nightmare. There are doors on either side which seem to leap out of the half darkness, and at long, long intervals a little flame of gas. It is only quite recently that there is any incandescent gas in St. Lazare and what there is, even now, is quite inadequate, merely serving, as a former prisoner expressed it, “to show us the darkness around.” The anticipatory mental torture of this first long journey down the interminable corridor must be terrific to a woman whose life, before her imprisonment, has run on easy lines. The doors are named and numbered. Cell No. 8, Cell No. 9, Workshop No. 2, Library, and so forth. All of them have huge and heavy locks, and bolts and bars. “Here,” said the _soubrette_. She produced a huge key which she fitted into the lock of a door on which in big white letters were painted the words “Pistole No. 12.” She had to use both hands to turn the key. The door creaked and opened inwards. Cell No. 12 is fairly large. As a rule there are six little beds in it, and it has held as many as eight beds. The walls are painted black, from the floor up to three quarters of the distance to the ceiling. The top quarter is white-washed, but the whitewash is grey, from age and want of care. They use extraordinarily little soap and water in the prison of Saint Lazare. The heavy beams across the ceiling have been decorated for many years by a network of spiders’ webs, and though there was a rumour in the Paris Press at the time of her imprisonment that Cell No. 12 had been cleaned for Madame Caillaux’s reception, I am told that the webs and the spiders are there still.

There were so many absurd stories in the Paris Press about the comforts which had been provided in Saint Lazare for Madame Caillaux that an impression became prevalent that she must be having rather a good time in prison. I need hardly say that there was very little, if any, foundation in fact for these stories. Monsieur Morand’s drawing of the “soubrette” does away with the mind-picture which newspaper readers may have formed of a smart maid waiting on this favoured prisoner, getting her bath for her, and bringing her a breakfast tray each morning. The _soubrette_ of _pistole_ No. 12, who looks after the _pistole_ next door as well, where there are seven prisoners, and who therefore can have little time to devote to the prisoner in No. 12, is a woman called Jeanne (I do not know her surname), who murdered her husband with a penknife some months ago. She is a quiet, somewhat surly woman, and good conduct has obtained for her the privilege of acting as _soubrette_ in two of the _pistoles_, for enforced idleness is one of the prison’s worst punishments. One of the favourite newspaper stories which were in circulation soon after Madame Caillaux’s imprisonment was one which told of the furnishing of the _pistole_ in which she had been put. Journalists had seen a big motor lorry arrive with her furniture, we were told, and the cell had been made as comfortable as a room in her own house. This story gained a semblance of truth from the reproduction in the papers of the arrival of a big motor lorry at Saint Lazare. I reproduce this picture here. It looks conclusive, and convincing at first sight, for the group of journalists who saw the van drive in can, one might think, surely not have all been mistaken. However, I took the trouble to make some inquiries while my Paris colleagues, I fear, jumped to conclusions. I learned that the van which figures in the picture comes quite regularly to Saint Lazare. It contains linen in the rough sent by a contracting firm, for whom the prisoners turn the rough linen into sheets and pillow-cases. The contractors, the prison authorities, and the prisoners, all find their advantage in this arrangement—and the van did not contain even a chair for Madame Caillaux’s cell.