gossip-loving and gossipy city, of the real facts of the life inside
the house of correction of Saint Lazare. I never realized myself until
quite recently the horrors of incarceration there. Chance then threw me
into communication with a woman who had shot another woman dead, had
spent some months in Saint Lazare, had been acquitted by the jury and
is a free woman now. Her crime had been a crime of jealousy. The jury
had refused to punish her more than she had been punished, and she got
a verdict of “not guilty,” though she shot and killed her rival in the
affections of her husband and pleaded guilty to so doing. This woman is
a woman with literary tastes, a woman who is in the habit of observing,
and who has the gift of describing what she sees. She has told me
a great deal about the life in Saint Lazare, but far more eloquent
than anything which she has told me is the present condition of the
woman herself. We talk about “the prison taint” with very little real
knowledge of what it means. Imagine a woman of your own world, a lady
of refinement and of education, who waits to be spoken to before she
opens her lips, who stands aside to let you pass if you open a door,
who, if you beg her to take precedence, walks before you with bowed
head and folded hands as though you were her gaoler. Her voice is
always subdued, she never contradicts, she gives her opinion only when
asked for it, and even then it is an opinion without emphasis. She has
forgotten how to hurry. She has forgotten how to lie in bed late in the
mornings. She never gives an order. When she wants something from a
servant her tone and manner in asking for it are those of supplication.
She is resigned—terribly resigned. Her whole attitude is one of
resignation so pitiful that, unattractive woman though she is, a man’s
heart fairly bleeds for her, and one feels a longing to try and comfort
and console her as one would console a child who has been beaten.
Morally and mentally the prisoner in Saint Lazare is being beaten all
the time that she is in prison. There is no physical punishment, there
is no active cruelty, there is only the terrible deadweight of the
prison system; but this is quite enough to unsettle and to dull the
most active brain. There is no doubt that the active brains suffer
the most. The whole atmosphere of the place, as this woman told me,
is the atmosphere of a convent from which all love and sympathy are
banished. Imagine, if you can, a hospital in which, while everything
is done to ease the physical distress of the patients, their moral
distress is ignored. Imagine a hospital in which the nurses are stern
and unsmiling, in which complaint of mental distress is met with
silence, in which no unnecessary word is ever spoken, in which no woman
ever puts her cool hand on another woman’s forehead because she has a
headache, or kisses her because she is unhappy. Imagine long dreary
days with no brightness in them. Imagine the horrid rattle of big keys
in heavy locks. Form your own mind-picture of Cell No. 12, with its
broken red-tiled floor, its bare black walls topped with dirty grey
whitewash, its furniture of a straw-bottomed chair, a plain white
deal table, a battered metal basin and water jug, its windows with
their bars and wire netting, the cruel silence and soul-deadening
simplicity. No flowers, no ribbons, no armchair, no cushions, very
little light after sundown, none of the thousand and one trifles which
brighten the poorest room of the poorest woman. No conversation, no
letters which have not been read first by strangers, visits hedged
in with the severest of formality, no name, a number—in a word no
life, merely existence, and existence without the sympathy which makes
existence lovable. This is the mind-picture I have formed, and this
is a true picture of Madame Caillaux’s daily life in _pistole_ No.
12. Her principal distraction is her occasional drive with two plain
clothes policemen to the Palace of Justice, and her examination there
by the magistrate. And yesterday this woman was fêted and cherished by
society, had a large circle of friends, was busy every moment of the
day. Now she has nothing to do but to think. She may write, she may
read, but she may only exist. Her existence has become a backwater
without a ripple in it, a dark cul-de-sac into which no sunshine
penetrates. Is it surprising that the constant presence of a
_soubrette_ of the prison should be considered necessary? A man smashed
a water-bottle and cut his throat in Paris the other day to avoid six
months imprisonment. He had been in prison before, awaiting trial, and
he knew what it meant. And he was a rough man with no refined tastes,
and no need of refinement. In Italy the other day a brigand went mad
after solitary confinement. The prisoner in Saint Lazare is not even
allowed to go mad. A great deal of nonsense has appeared in the English
newspapers about Madame Caillaux’s life in Saint Lazare. Paris papers
have printed stories (the authorities have always contradicted them)
drawing a picture of a comfortable room with carpet on the floor and
curtains to the windows. The woman who described to me the real life in
Saint Lazare assures me that the “carpet” is merely a strip of rug to
keep the tiled floor, with the dangers of the broken tiles, from the
prisoner’s bare feet when she steps out of bed, and that it is a
physical impossibility that any curtains should be hung. Madame
Steinheil was allowed to hang sheets in front of the windows. Perhaps
Madame Caillaux has obtained this permission too. The prisoner is
allowed to get her food from outside, but this food is of the plainest
and simplest. She is allowed to receive visits, but the visits are rare
ones, and she is never alone with her visitor. She may write, but what
she writes is always read. She may receive letters but she knows that
all her letters pass through other hands and are subject to careful
scrutiny before she gets them. She has no privacy at all and knows
that she is always under watch and that even when she is alone in her
cell there is an eye at the little trapdoor which peeps into it over
her bed. The prisoner in the _pistole_ has not even the consolation of
company during exercise hours, and she must sometimes envy the women
whom she can see from her windows. She can talk to the nuns, but they
answer as little as possible. She lives out her life in a whisper. The
_soubrette_ is a prisoner. She talks a little sometimes—prison talk.
She brings the _pistolière_ her cup of soup at seven in the morning,
and tells her all the prison news, but she is not allowed to remain
long, for she has other work to do and it is the hour of the canteen.
If the _pistolière_ wants coffee she must go to the canteen and buy
it. She is allowed a large mugful every morning, for which she pays
twopence. She walks down the long dreary corridor with her mug in her
hand, and waits in a large hall where the _pistolières_ stand in a row
against the wall. Numbers are called in turn, and each woman is given
her coffee and the permitted trifles she has ordered the day before,
such as butter, milk, white bread (the prison bread is grey), herrings,
dried figs or letter paper. Then the long morning drags on until post
time. The letters are distributed by Sister Léonide herself, and the
letters are always open. The _pistolière_ does not take her exercise
in the large courtyard with the trees in it. The yard in which she is
allowed to walk, and which Monsieur Moran has drawn for me, is small
and has a high wall round it. The windows of cells look down on it, and
as the prisoner walks up and down she knows that she is being watched
and feels that there are eyes behind the bars of every window. Every
now and again a big rat runs across her path. These rats of Saint
Lazare are fat and of huge size. They run about quite freely and are
almost tame, for no one ever interferes with them. The nuns of Saint
Lazare keep cats, but they and the rats made friends long ago, and the
cats and rats feed amicably together. At least a hundred rats a day
are killed in the kitchens and corridors, but there are so many rats
that the others hardly miss them. You hear them at night scampering
over the beams of the ceilings, you see them in the corridors, the
kitchens, the cells, everywhere. For some reason they are most playful
about dusk, and there are stories in the prison of women who have had
fits of hysteria and have even gone out of their minds because of
sudden fear of these rats of the prison. There is a sickness common
to all prisoners in Saint Lazare which is known there as “the six
o’clock sickness” (_le mal de six heures_). It attacks all newcomers,
and none escape it. It comes on after the walk in the courtyard, when
night begins to close in, and the prison settles into silence till the
morning. It is an attack of a kind of malarial fever, a shivering
fit and a violent headache with a feeling of lassitude and nausea
afterwards. When it comes on, the prisoners are given a cachet of
quinine from the prison pharmacy. It does very little good. After dark
the _pistolière_ is allowed two candles which she fixes in a piece of
bread or fastens by means of their own wax to her wooden table. No
lamps are allowed. I have seen it stated in the newspapers that Madame
Caillaux is allowed a lamp, but I do not know whether the statement
is true. The last ceremony of the day is “the roll call.” This, like
most of the other ceremonies in Saint Lazare, is conducted in absolute
silence. The door of the _pistole_ is opened, and Sœur Léonide
appears with the big Book of Hours which she carries in her two hands.
On either side of her is a _soubrette_, one of whom carries a big bunch
of keys. Sister Léonide stands in the doorway of the _pistole_ for a
moment, looks at the prisoner to make certain that she is there, bends
her head, turns and goes. Not a word is spoken. And then comes the
night.
[Illustration: MADAME CAILLAUX’S CELL EXACTLY AS IT IS
_Drawn by M. Albert Morand who received special permission from the
prison authorities to make this sketch_]
The one bright spot in this terrible life of monotony in the prison of
Saint Lazare, the one relief from these never-ending days of the same
food, the same walk, the same rats, the same silence, is Mass in the
chapel. Here the _pistolière_ sits, silent, it is true, but with other
women near her and round her. But even here she sits apart, and Madame
Caillaux, I am told, has not attended mass. “There is only one hope
in Saint Lazare,” said the former prisoner who gave me most of this
information, “we all hope for our day of trial.” “All of you?” I asked.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “No matter what we fear, nothing can be worse than
the terrible monotony of life in the _pistole_. Our lives are those of
prisoners in a dark gallery. The trial and the open law courts are the
one glimpse of light and life at the end of the passage.”
III
THE CRIME AND THE PUBLIC
Whenever anything sensational occurs to disturb the serenity of daily
life in Paris, the vortex of politics promptly sucks it in. The
Parisians—Frenchmen in general, in fact—are insatiable politicians,
and no matter what the happening, discussion of it becomes immediately
a party matter. It is of little consequence whether the item which is
talked about in clubs, in cafés, in the newspapers, in the theatre
lobbies, at dinner-parties, and at supper after the theatre is green
hair, the Caillaux Drama, or a new play, the people who discuss it
usually take sides in accordance with their political views. You may
laugh at the idea that green hair or a non-political play has any
bearing on politics, but in Paris this is curiously true. Green hair,
for instance, became a dogma of the Opposition. It was adopted by
ladies of the aristocracy, therefore Socialists and Radicals jeered
at it. The sensible man who ventured to laugh at green hair was
immediately stigmatized by those who upheld the new fashion as a
supporter of the parliamentary system and the _bloc_, not because
parliamentary Radicals and green hair have any real connexion, not
because Monsieur Jaurès prevents the ladies of his family from wearing
it, but because the Duchesse de Y. and the Comtesse de Z., who are
“_bien pensants_,” have become votaries of the fashion. A new play
is judged not so much on its merits as on political grounds. If the
author be of aristocratic sympathies, Monsieur Lavedan, for instance,
the anti-aristocrats promptly run down his play, and if he be one of
the class from which Dreyfusards were drawn during the Dreyfus case
and afterwards, the reactionaries have no good word to say for his
work. How curiously true this is in Paris, and how difficult it is for
any foreigner who has not lived many years in Paris to understand it,
was proved by the tumult and bloodshed over a play of Monsieur Henry
Bernstein’s which was produced some years ago at the Comédie Française.
The reactionary party actually contrived to wreck the play because they
disliked Monsieur Bernstein, because he was a Jew, and because his play
was produced in the national theatre. The principal difficulty for a
foreigner in understanding the extraordinary hold of politics in France
on matters which appear and which are really entirely outside the scope
of politics is increased by the Frenchman’s attitude in argument. When
a foreigner disagrees with a Frenchman on any question whatsoever, the
Frenchman, should he happen to be getting the worse of the discussion,
puts an end to it by remarking, smilingly and politely, “But you are
a foreigner, my friend, and therefore cannot possibly understand this
matter, which is essentially French.” There is no answer to such a
statement. Frenchmen believe, quaintly enough, that the hand of every
foreigner is always against them. The national conceit in France, an
excellent asset, of course, for the nation, but singularly aggravating
sometimes, is enormous, unfathomable, and entirely impervious to
argument or logic. The greatest praise for anything in France is that
it is French. The greatest praise for anything in Paris is that it
is very Parisian, and so peculiar is this national conceit that it
finds an outlet in the inevitable claim which is invariably made for
French initiative in any invention, scientific or otherwise, which
has made its mark in the world, for any novelty of medical science,
for anything inspired at all. The origin of anything worth having
in the world is French. This is dogma, and quite indisputable. Your
Frenchman will admit the marvels of Marconi, but he will always add
that Branly, a Frenchman, was the real inventor of wireless telegraphy,
and will ignore Hertz as far as he dares. There was an argument in the
French Press, not long ago, for instance, to prove that Columbus was a
Frenchman. I do not know whether his famous egg was also a French egg,
and I do not remember exactly how Columbus was proved to be French. I
do know, however, that Frenchmen are quite sure that, although Edison
and Bell had something to do with the invention of the telephone, a
Frenchman was the real inventor of it, and quite recently, when Mr.
Westinghouse died, the newspapers proved, to their own satisfaction,
that a Frenchman was the inventor of the Westinghouse brake.
[Illustration: _Agence Nouvelle—Photo, Paris_
MONSIEUR CAILLAUX IN HIS OFFICE AT THE MINISTÈRE DES FINANCES]
Now the reactionary nationalist party in France makes more noise than
all the others put together. The reactionary newspapers are more
violent in tone than any of the others, and have a knack of making a
statement on Monday, reaffirming it on Tuesday, and alluding to it as
an absolute and admitted fact on Wednesday. They have therefore the
grip on public opinion which noise and reiteration always secure, and
it is very natural that public opinion abroad, which has necessarily
less opportunity for discrimination, should finish by accepting the
reiterated outcry of the noisiest portion of the French Press as the
real French opinion. In a drama like the Caillaux drama, in a case
where a respected man, the editor of a flourishing Paris newspaper,
has been done to death, it is obvious that those who feel that the
woman who has killed him has any claim to sympathy at all will find
themselves in the minority. It is no less a fact that unfair methods
have been in use ever since the death of Monsieur Calmette to rouse the
opinion of the world against the wretched woman who is in prison
for killing him. The law courts will decide how much or how little
sympathy is due to her. In the meanwhile the French Press is pursuing
its inevitable method of judging the case in advance, and everything
is being done for political reasons to increase the public feeling of
natural horror for the deed which resulted in the death of the editor
of the _Figaro_. It is difficult to exaggerate the bitter tone of the
daily howl for punishment: Already the _Action Française_ has begun to
throw mud at Monsieur Boucard, the examining magistrate, in case his
report on the case should be too lenient, and to suggest that he has
been bought over. I have not seen in any French paper a suggestion that
Madame Caillaux is already being punished by the political downfall of
her husband and her own incarceration. There is no sign anywhere in the
French newspapers of an attempt to be fair, and the very worst side of
the French character has come to the surface in this chorus of bitter
cruelty to a woman who is down, on the one side, and libels on the dead
man on the other. As much harm is being done to Madame Caillaux’s case
by her friends as by her enemies. While her enemies are clamouring
against her, her friends are losing any public sympathy which might
have arisen, by attacking the memory of Gaston Calmette. It is quite
obvious to any reasonable person who considers the drama calmly and
without prejudice that Madame Caillaux did not kill Monsieur Gaston
Calmette for the mere pleasure of killing. It is equally obvious that
Monsieur Calmette waged his campaign in the _Figaro_ against Monsieur
Caillaux because he thought it was the right thing to do, and that
he thought the political downfall of Monsieur Caillaux, which he was
attempting to bring about, would be a good thing for France. Nothing
is to be gained, however, on either side by an attempt to vilify the
other. The facts speak for themselves, and can be chronicled in a very
few lines. Monsieur Calmette considered the political downfall of
Joseph Caillaux a necessity for his country. Monsieur Caillaux, rightly
or wrongly, feared that to procure his downfall Monsieur Calmette
intended to publish certain private letters. Monsieur Calmette’s daily
attacks on Monsieur Caillaux naturally enraged both Monsieur Caillaux
and his wife. The fear of an attack in print on their private lives may
or may not have been justified, but it certainly was the direct cause
of the murder. This murder is deplored by everybody. Nobody will deny
that Madame Caillaux deserves punishment, but if those who are working
every day to embitter public feeling against her would only pause to
think, and would leave political considerations on one side for a
moment, they would realize that their campaign is an insult to their
own judges, their own juries, and their own legal system. France boasts
of its liberty. Whenever a sensational case occurs, and public feelings
are stirred, that liberty is allowed to degenerate into licence, and
to disagree with the howl of the reactionary Press is to ask for
abuse. Everybody who says a word of pity for Madame Caillaux in France
nowadays is accused of trying to make the course of justice deviate.
The examining magistrate whose duty it is to try and find the truth out
and report on it is insulted if he dares to be impartial. Everybody who
dares to suggest that the very bitterness of the Caillaux campaign was
largely responsible for its deplorable climax is held up to obloquy as
an enemy of France. I hold no brief either for Madame Caillaux and
her husband or for the campaign in the _Figaro_. Both the murder and
the bitterness of the campaign of which it was the climax are to be
deplored. The campaign, as I shall show in this book, was a necessary
evil. The bitterness and insistency with which it was conducted were
perhaps unnecessary evils. The woman has killed, and will undoubtedly
be punished. She is being punished already. The man who conducted the
bitter campaign has been shot dead. Surely there is nothing to be
gained by attempting to sully the dead man’s memory, or by attempting
to overwhelm the woman whose victim he was. Madame Caillaux in prison
is a victim of the political campaign of the _Figaro_ in exactly the
same degree as the editor of the _Figaro_ is the victim of Madame
Caillaux. The two will be judged. The wrong of one neither minimises
nor magnifies the action of the other. I am as certain that Madame
Caillaux believed, she had a right to shoot as I am certain that she
was wrong to kill. I am as certain that Monsieur Calmette believed in
the justice of his campaign as I am certain that Monsieur and Madame
Caillaux believed that it was being conducted unjustly.
What neither of them or Monsieur Calmette realized was the harm that
all three would do to the country which I am certain all three loved.
The terrible, the brutal fact remains that Gaston Calmette is in his
coffin and that Madame Caillaux killed him. Unhappily, there is no
doubt that if Monsieur Calmette had been wounded merely, the outcry of
the anti-Caillaux party would have been nearly as loud, and the dignity
of French justice would have been considered as little or less than
it is to-day by Monsieur Caillaux and his friends on the one side and
Monsieur Calmette and his on the other. If the Caillaux drama had not
a death in it the disinclination to allow the courts to judge without
interference would have been as great as it is now, in spite of the
lesson which the Fabre incident should teach. To the observer, to the
lover of France the most deplorable, the most unhappy result of the
Caillaux drama is the belittling of France in the eyes of the whole
world by the inability of the French nation to put simple faith in its
own administrators of the justice of the country. And most unhappily of
all, this want of faith is justified. The story of the Rochette case,
like the story of the Dreyfus case, is undoubtedly a blot on France’s
fair name, and every man or woman who loves France sincerely must
deplore it.
It is a regrettable thing that Frenchmen find it so difficult, find
it, indeed, well nigh impossible to fight fairly. The case of Madame
Caillaux is surely bad enough as it stands without the need for unfair
comment before it comes on for trial. If you say this to a Frenchman he
will probably answer that there is very little hope of a fair trial.
This I do not believe, and if I did believe it and were a Frenchman I
should hate to say it. I could fill this volume with extracts from the
Paris newspapers, of almost any day since Gaston Calmette was killed in
his office, to prove how unfair comments have been on the case while it
is still _sub judice_. I will not weary my readers with long extracts,
however. They would be unpleasant reading, and they would answer no
more purpose than this little but characteristic extract from the
_Patrie_ of the 8th of April. When Madame Caillaux was first put in
prison there was, as I have said, an outcry in the Opposition Press
against the “undue favours which were being shown to her in Saint
Lazare.” The reports of these undue favours were flatly contradicted by
the prison authorities, but the lawyers of another prisoner, a Madame
Vitz, were clever enough to take advantage of the outcry to secure the
comparative comforts of the _pistole_ for their client. Madame Vitz was
already in a weak state of health when she was moved, and she has now
gone mad. This is what the _Patrie_ (a reactionary paper) has to say
about her case: “Madame Caillaux, who enjoys the little and the great
favours of the prison administration, must be satisfied to-day. Another
wish which she recently expressed has just been carried out. Calmette’s
murderess had a neighbour in the cell next to hers, Madame Vitz. Her
counsel, Maître Desbons, obtained, with a great deal of trouble, some
alleviation of her fate, and she was put in the _pistole_ class in
the cell next door to the one occupied by Madame Caillaux. Owing to
her constant annoyance at the extraordinary favours with which Madame
Caillaux was treated Madame Vitz has gone mad. In her cell she was
always calling out ‘Madame Caillaux! Madame Caillaux!’ and screaming.
The wife of the ex-Minister of Finance complained of her neighbourhood.
The director of the prison bowed to her wishes, and had Madame Vitz
removed to the prison infirmary.” Can anything be more grossly, more
stupidly, and childishly unfair than this attempt to alienate sympathy
from Madame Vitz’s neighbour? I have quoted it because it is short,
but any Paris paper of the _Patrie_ type unfortunately provides more
material of the same kind daily than I should care to translate or my
readers would care to read. I should not be surprised if many of the
comments in the London newspapers suffered considerably and indirectly
from the unfairness of many of the newspapers in Paris while the case
has been _sub judice_. The reason for this is very simple. In Paris
there are six evening papers of any importance. These are the _Patrie_,
which appears early in the afternoon, the _Temps_, the _Liberté_, and
the _Journal des Débâts_, which appear at about five o’clock, the
_Intransigeant_ and the _Presse_, which appear just about dinner
time. Of these six papers five are Opposition papers, and only one of
these five, the _Journal des Débâts_, makes the slightest attempt to
be impartial. The only really impartial evening paper is the _Temps_,
which gives the news of the day and comments on it, but comments
without bias. The _Patrie_ and the _Presse_ are under the same
directorate, the _Intransigeant_, while perhaps not quite so rabid as
the _Presse_ and the _Patrie_, is openly unfair whenever politics call
for unfairness, as they usually do, and the _Liberté_, while it prints
the news, is always invariably and openly in such frank opposition to
the Government that nothing done by any member of the Government is
ever anything but wrong, and news which has the slightest reference
to politics of any kind is invariably coloured. It follows that the
local correspondent without a very wide knowledge and experience of
French peculiarities and French methods must find it very difficult to
form an opinion (in time for transmission to London the same evening)
sufficiently without bias to be really valuable. Every journalist in
Paris is obliged to read the evening papers; the evening papers, with
two honourable exceptions above mentioned, always present the news
of the day with the colouring of their political convictions, and
the correspondent of an English paper may therefore frequently have
found it impossible during the Caillaux drama, as he often found it
impossible during the Panama scandal, the Dreyfus case, and other of
the periodic convulsions of modern France, to separate the wheat of
fact from the chaff of political colouring. In saying this I intend no
reflection whatever on the honesty, the brilliance, or the intelligence
of the Paris correspondents of the London Press, all of whom are my
acquaintances, and most of whom I am proud to number among my personal
friends. I feel sure that if any of them happen to read what I have
just written they will not only admit its truth, but be inclined to
think that I have spoken with even less emphasis than I might.
Whatever may be the result of the trial of Madame Caillaux there is no
question of the immediate result of the murder of Monsieur Calmette, on
public opinion in France. Men and women alike, all consider that Madame
Caillaux should be treated with the utmost severity, and men and women
alike, all are anxious to see whatever punishment is possible meted out
to her husband. So real is this feeling—and I am talking now of the
general public and not of journalists or politicians—that Monsieur
Caillaux has found it necessary to go about, when it has been needful
for him to show himself in public, with a strong bodyguard of police
in plain clothes. He has allowed himself to be persuaded, contrary
to his first intention, to remain a candidate for re-election in
his constituency, but he is so well aware of the feeling against him
everywhere that, although lack of personal courage is certainly not
one of the faults of the ex-Minister of Finance, he is conducting his
canvass by deputy, and remains in Paris under constant guard.
[Illustration: _Le Miroir, Dessin de F. Auer._
PRESIDENT POINCARÉ GIVES EVIDENCE ON OATH IN THE CAILLAUX DRAMA BEFORE
THE PRESIDENT OF THE APPEAL COURT, WHO WAITED ON HIM FOR THIS PURPOSE
AT THE ELYSÉE.]