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.
[Illustration: _Agence Nouvelle—Photo, Paris_
THE BROTHERS, SONS AND RELATIVES OF M. CALMETTE AT THE FUNERAL]
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
[Illustration: _Agence Nouvelle—Photo, Paris_
MME. CAILLAUX (AND DETECTIVE) ON HER WAY TO THE
LAW COURTS TO BE EXAMINED]
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.
[Illustration: SŒUR LEONIDE
The chief superintendent of the prison nuns
_Specially drawn by M. Albert Morand_]
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.
[Illustration: THE CORRIDOR OUTSIDE THE PISTOLES
Madame Caillaux’s cell, No. 12, is the door on the right by the table
_Drawn specially in St. Lazare Prison by M. Albert Morand_]
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.
[Illustration: “JEANNE,” THE _SOUBRETTE_ OF PISTOLE NO. 12
_Specially drawn by M. Albert Morand_]
The cell has now two beds in it, one for the prisoner, one for Jeanne
the _soubrette_. A great deal of nonsense has been written in the
newspapers about “the maid” whom Madame Caillaux was allowed in prison.
The simple fact, of course, is that the authorities consider it
necessary that watch should be kept on her, and the “maid,” Jeanne the
prison _soubrette_, is by no means a pleasant companion. The furniture
is very primitive, though better than that of some of the other cells.
There are a mattress on the bed of cast iron, a pillow but no bolster,
two straw-bottomed chairs, a little white deal table, a jug and a
basin which were once enamelled yellow but through which the rusty
metal shows. On the bed is a brown rug with the word “Prison” written
on it. Madame Caillaux has been allowed to cover this rug with an old
quilt which Madame Steinheil brought into the prison. Above the bed
is a shelf on which the prisoner’s linen can be put, behind the bed a
little trap through which the wardresses can peep into the cell at any
moment. The floor of No. 12 is tiled with rough red tiles, much worn,
and broken. There is a stove, but it has never warmed the cell, and in
cold weather the damp and cold are very bitter. No. 12 has three
windows, strongly barred, and in addition to the bars there is wire
netting. This wire netting has its reason. The windows of No. 12 look
out on the courtyard in which, twice a day, the prisoners are allowed
for exercise. This courtyard is quite pleasant in the summer, for
there are several trees in it, but the prisoners have an unpleasant
habit of attracting the attention of the inmates of _pistole_ No. 12
by throwing stones at the windows, as a sign that chocolate or cakes
would be acceptable. In this courtyard inside the old convent of Saint
Lazare, which has the picturesque charm of great age, some of the most
sensational scenes of the days of the Terror took place, for it was
from that courtyard that the tumbrils left for the guillotine. The
chapel opens into this courtyard too, and Madame Caillaux from the
windows of her cell enjoys a very pretty view when the courtyard is
empty. In the exercise hours the view is less pleasing. There is always
war between the women prisoners of the other classes and those of the
_pistole_ class, and until the new inmate of No. 12 learned how to slip
bits of chocolate, biscuit, or sugar out across the window-sill so that
they fell into the courtyard she dared hardly show herself at the
window. It is a peculiarity that, in the house of silence, everything
of interest is known to all the prisoners immediately. Madame Caillaux
had not been twelve hours in No. 12 before all her fellow prisoners
knew all about the drama which had brought her there, and were curious
to see her.
[Illustration: _Agence Nouvelle—Photo, Paris_
THE LORRY WHICH PARIS JOURNALISTS THOUGHT WAS FULL OF
MME. CAILLAUX’S FURNITURE.
Most of the men in the crowd are either journalists or
police in plain clothes]
[Illustration: LA COUR DES FILLES IN SAINT LAZARE
It is here that Madame Caillaux is allowed to take daily exercise
for three-quarters of an hour.
_Drawn specially in St. Lazare Prison by M. Albert Morand_]