of France have fallen on everybody who has ventured to express the
opinion that there was any motive at all for Madame Caillaux’s crime
except an inhuman lust for murder. And yet not only the evidence of
Monsieur Caillaux himself but the evidence on oath of the President of
the French Republic, Monsieur Raymond Poincaré, and the evidence of
other independent and unbiased witnesses, shows that there is reason
to believe that the immediate motive of the crime was a hysterical
fear of disclosures which Madame Caillaux believed would be made in
the _Figaro_. Of course this hysterical fear does not excuse the crime
of Madame Caillaux, but it certainly goes very far towards explaining
it, and the existence of the belief that there was danger of the
publication of letters which contained intimate allusion to her private
life cannot be doubted by anybody, no matter what their political
convictions may be after reading the evidence which President Poincaré
felt called on to give, creating by the giving of it a precedent which
emphasizes the doctrine that the President of the Republic has, with
the rights, the liabilities and the responsibilities of every private
citizen of France. President Poincaré did not go to the Palace of
Justice to give his evidence. Monsieur Caillaux, on Thursday, April
2, informed the examining magistrate, Monsieur Boucard, that certain
persons had evidence of importance to give which bore on his wife’s
case. Among the names which he mentioned was that of Monsieur Raymond
Poincaré, the President of the French Republic, and Monsieur Caillaux
stated that the evidence for which he asked the examining magistrate
to seek would prove conclusively that on the morning of the crime
both he and his wife were, rightly or wrongly, convinced that the
_Figaro_ might publish certain letters of a private nature referring
to themselves. An official letter was sent by the examining magistrate
to the Parquet de la Seine, with reference to the course that should
be followed in this matter of Monsieur Poincaré’s evidence, and after
some hesitation as to ways and means of enabling the President of the
Republic to give evidence on oath, Monsieur Forichon, the presiding
judge of the Court of Appeal, was sent to the Elysée, and to him after
swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,
Monsieur Raymond Poincaré described the interview which Monsieur
Caillaux had with him at ten o’clock on the morning of Monday, March
16. We know that on that morning Monsieur Monier, the President of the
Civil Court of the Seine department, called, at her request, on Madame
Caillaux, and was consulted by her as to means and ways of putting a
stop to the campaign against her husband in the _Figaro_. Monsieur
Caillaux had intended to be present at this consultation, but a Cabinet
council had been called at the Elysée at ten o’clock, and he was of
course obliged to attend it. The Ministers were nearly all assembled,
and were chatting with the President of the Republic in a room leading
into the Council Chamber, when, just as the doors of the Council
Chamber were opened and the Ministers passed through, Monsieur Caillaux
asked the President of the Republic for a few moments’ conversation
in private. Monsieur Poincaré, with the unfailing courtesy which
distinguishes him, acquiesced immediately, and allowing the other
Ministers to pass into the Council Chamber, the President of the
Republic remained alone with Monsieur Caillaux in the room they had
left, and closed the door. “I have just learned from a sure source,”
said Monsieur Caillaux to Monsieur Poincaré, “that private letters
written by me to the lady who is now my wife have been handed to the
_Figaro_ and that Gaston Calmette intends publishing them.” “Monsieur
Caillaux was under the stress of great emotion,” said the President of
the Republic in his evidence. “He told me that he feared that Monsieur
Calmette was about to publish in the _Figaro_ private letters, the
divulgation of which would be extremely painful to him and Madame
Caillaux. I replied that I considered Monsieur Calmette an honourable
gentleman (_un galant homme_) altogether incapable of publishing
letters which would bring up Madame Caillaux’s name in the polemics
between them. But my efforts to convince him that this was so were in
vain, and he replied to me that he considered divers articles of the
_Figaro_ were written with the object of preparing (the public mind)
for this publication. I was unable to undeceive Monsieur Caillaux or
to calm him. At one moment he sprang from his seat and exclaimed, ‘If
Calmette publishes these letters I will kill him.’ He then declared to
me that he was going to consult his lawyers, notably Maître Thorel,
the solicitor, on the means to be taken and the procedure necessary to
prevent the _Figaro_ from publishing these letters. I advised him to
see, as well, the barrister who had taken his interests in hand in his
divorce case, Maître Maurice Bernard. Maître Maurice Bernard, I said to
Monsieur Caillaux, knows Monsieur Calmette. It will be easy for him
to get the assurance from Monsieur Calmette that no letter will be
published, and if needs be—if, contrary to my own belief, your
suspicions are founded—he would have the authority necessary to
prevent the publication of the letters. Monsieur Caillaux thanked me,
but declared to me that as he would be occupied at the Senate the whole
afternoon he would not be able to see Maître Bernard. In reply to that,
I told him that Maître Bernard was a friend of my own who often came to
see me, and that he had let me know that not having seen me for some
time owing to a journey to Algiers, he would come, either that day
or the next, to shake me by the hand. I added that if he came to see
me I would make a point of repeating our conversation to him. Maître
Bernard did come early in the afternoon. I told him what Monsieur
Caillaux feared, and asked him to make a point of seeing him. Maître
Bernard replied that he considered Monsieur Calmette quite incapable of
publishing letters which referred to Madame Caillaux, but that for all
that he would make a point of seeing Monsieur Caillaux the same day,
and if need be Monsieur Calmette as well. I heard afterwards that
Maître Bernard had seen Monsieur Caillaux at the end of the afternoon,
but too late. I was much impressed by the state in which Monsieur
Caillaux was, so much so that when the Prime Minister came to see me on
business during the afternoon I thought it my duty to tell him of the
conversation I had had with Monsieur Caillaux and with Maître Maurice
Bernard.”
Monsieur Caillaux’s own evidence was equally assertive on the question
of the letters. I may say here that it is common talk in Paris that
these letters, one a short one, and the other sixteen pages long,
contained passages which well explained Monsieur and Madame Caillaux’s
fears for their publication. Monsieur Caillaux is said to have written
to the lady who is Madame Caillaux now, with the utmost freedom and
disrespect of the Republic to which he gives the nickname “Marianne,”
and the intimacy of portions of the letters is generally believed to
be such that no paper as respectable as the _Figaro_ could possibly
affront its readers by putting them in cold print.
The letters, or copies of them, exist, or were in existence just before
the crime. They are popularly believed to be highly scandalous in
content and in tone. It is, however, only fair to Monsieur Calmette’s
memory and to the writer of the letters, Monsieur Caillaux, and his
unhappy wife to whom he wrote them, to put on record the protest
of Madame Madeleine Guillemard, who wrote on April 8, 1914, to the
examining magistrate declaring that she knew the whole text of the
letters, that they were intimate and tender, but that “their tone was
that of letters written by a gentleman to a lady whom he respects.”
President Poincaré’s evidence, however, shows that Monsieur and Madame
Caillaux feared that the letters would be printed, and this fear is
made more emphatic by Monsieur Caillaux’s own evidence before Monsieur
Boucard, which, with the curious habit which is prevalent in France,
the examining magistrate summarized and communicated immediately to
the Press.
[Illustration: _Miroir Photo, Paris_
MONSIEUR CAILLAUX LEAVING THE LAW COURTS
(The man on the right is a detective)]
IV
MONSIEUR CAILLAUX’S EXAMINATION
The principal witness for the defence of Madame Caillaux will be her
husband, and as is usual in France where every witness is allowed and
is expected to tell the examining magistrate who collects evidence
before the trial everything he knows which bears in any way upon the
case, Monsieur Caillaux has gone at length into his wife’s motives
for the crime, and has described very fully the happenings on March
16, 1914, when the murder was committed. He was examined by Monsieur
Boucard in his room at the Palace of Justice on April 7 and 8,
immediately after the evidence of the President of the Republic had
been taken. Monsieur Joseph Caillaux is the son of Monsieur Eugène
Alexandre Caillaux, who was Inspector of Finance and Minister of State.
He has been married twice.
His first wife was Madame Gueydan, who was the divorced wife of a
Monsieur Jules Dupré. Monsieur Caillaux married her in 1906. Monsieur
Caillaux and his first wife did not live very happily, and their
relations became more than strained in July 1909, after the fall of
the Clemenceau Cabinet, in which Monsieur Caillaux was Minister of
Finance. In September of that year Monsieur Caillaux and his wife were
at Mamers. One night, Monsieur Caillaux declared to the examining
magistrate, a packet of letters disappeared from a drawer in his
writing-table. Two of these letters were letters written by Monsieur
Caillaux to Madame Léo Claretie (_née_ Raynouard). Madame Claretie was
at that time (September 1909) already divorced from her husband. As we
know, she became Monsieur Caillaux’s wife in 1911. These two letters,
which disappeared from Monsieur Caillaux’s writing-table are the two
letters to which reference is made at the end of the last chapter,
letters which Monsieur and Madame Caillaux believed to be in the
possession of Monsieur Calmette. The letters were of a most intimate
character. One, a very short one, was written on letter paper with the
heading of the Conseil Général de la Sarthe. The second, written on
paper of the Chamber of Deputies, was a long sixteen-page letter
containing, Monsieur Caillaux said, the story for the last few years
of all the intimacies of his life. “In this letter,” Monsieur Caillaux
said, “I told my future wife, at length, of the reasons, many of which
were based on political grounds, which prevented me from freeing
myself immediately from my wife (Madame Gueydan) and from marrying
her.” Monsieur Caillaux was much upset at the discovery that Madame
Gueydan-Caillaux had possession of these letters, and for their
restitution he offered his wife either a complete reconciliation or a
divorce. Madame Gueydan-Caillaux accepted the reconciliation with her
husband, and on November 5, 1909, the parties met in the presence of
Monsieur Privat-Deschanel, the secretary of the Ministry of Finance,
and an intimate friend of Monsieur Caillaux’s, at Monsieur Caillaux’s
house, 12 Rue Pierre Charron. In Monsieur Privat-Deschanel’s presence
the letters were solemnly burned, together with others bearing on the
disagreement between husband and wife. Before they were burned Madame
Gueydan-Caillaux gave her word of honour to her husband and to Monsieur
Privat-Deschanel that she had kept no photograph and no copy of the
letters. Their destruction was followed by a complete reconciliation.
Monsieur Caillaux declared that as far as he was concerned the
reconciliation was sincere, that he gave up all thought of Madame
Raynouard-Claretie, his present wife, and he asked Monsieur Boucard to
call on Monsieur Privat-Deschanel to bear witness to this. Some months
later Monsieur Caillaux found, he says, that it was quite impossible
for him to remain friends with his wife, and at the beginning of July
1910 he instituted divorce proceedings. The divorce was pronounced on
March 9, 1911 by agreement between the two parties. Very soon after,
in November of the same year, Monsieur Caillaux was married in Paris
to the divorced wife of Monsieur Léo Claretie, who is now in prison
for the murder of Monsieur Gaston Calmette. As a curious sidelight on
the mixture of intimate home details and of politics in the Caillaux
drama it is worth while remembering here, that in her evidence to the
examining magistrate Madame Gueydan, Monsieur Caillaux’s first wife,
stated the reasons, as she understood them, for this change of mind
on the part of Monsieur Caillaux. She declared that in November 1909
Monsieur Caillaux, being a candidate for re-election in the Sarthe
District feared that her possession of the letters and her antagonism
to himself might make trouble for him during the electoral campaign.
In April 1910 the election was over and he was elected, he feared her
no longer, wanted to marry his present wife, and instituted divorce
proceedings in consequence in July, forcing her to allow herself to be
divorced by the sheer deadweight of his influence, which if exercised
against her would, she knew, have prohibited her from obtaining the
services of the best counsel and have reduced her to absolute penury.
In October 1911 when Monsieur Caillaux was Prime Minister, his _chef
de cabinet_, Monsieur Desclaux, told him one day that a journalist,
Monsieur Vervoort, who was on the _Gil Blas_, had been offered by
Madame Gueydan, his former wife, the right to publish certain letters.
The details which Monsieur Vervoort gave about these letters, referred
exactly, Monsieur Caillaux said, to the two letters which his former
wife had burned in his presence, and to a letter which appeared in
the _Figaro_ of March 13, 1914, in facsimile. This letter was written
by Monsieur Caillaux to his first wife, Madame Gueydan, before he
married her. Like the others it was a love letter with long passages
about politics in it. It was written thirteen years ago, but it
contained Monsieur Caillaux’s statement: “I have crushed the income-tax
while appearing to defend it.” (J’ai écrasé l’impôt sur le revenu en
ayant l’air de le défendre.) It is this letter portions of which the
_Figaro_ published in facsimile. It was written in Monsieur Caillaux’s
well-known handwriting, and he had signed it “Ton Jo”. The intimacy
of the “Ton” was of course in itself something of an outrage when it
appeared in a newspaper, for the letter was written to another man’s
wife.
[Illustration: _Miroir, Photo, Paris_
M. PRIVAT-DESCHANEL WHO WITNESSED THE DESTRUCTION OF THE LETTERS
BY MME. GUEYDAN-CAILLAUX]
Monsieur Caillaux considered, he said, that the letters (the “Ton
Jo” letter and the other two) formed a trilogy, so that if one were
published, publication of the two others was likely. When Monsieur
Desclaux told him what Monsieur Vervoort had said, Monsieur Caillaux
answered, “These letters have been stolen from me. Their publication
would cause me pain because of their intimate bearing on my private
life. I cannot believe that any journalist could have so little
respect for himself or his profession as to make use of such weapons.”
Monsieur Desclaux replied that neither Monsieur Vervoort nor his
editor, Monsieur Pierre Mortier, were going to use the letters. Some
weeks after this Monsieur Caillaux married his present wife. Monsieur
Caillaux at this point in his evidence broke off to declare to Monsieur
Boucard that his second marriage was a very happy one. This declaration
was not as unnecessary as it sounds at first sight, for long before the
actual drama, during the weeks of the bitter campaign in the _Figaro_
against the Minister of Finance, from January’s beginning till the day
of M. Calmette’s death, and afterwards, Paris gossip had been very
busy with the names of both men. They were said to be rivals in their
private lives. I do not care to go into the details of the gossip which
associated their names in rivalry, for this gossip, in which another
woman’s name was mentioned, is decidedly unpleasant. Monsieur Calmette’s
married life would have been cut short by the law courts if death had
not intervened, and if Monsieur Calmette had been killed on March 17,
instead of on the 16th, his wife would no longer have been Madame
Calmette. Divorce proceedings between the two had culminated, and the
divorce would have been made absolute on that day. As it was Madame
Calmette, whose father, Monsieur Prestat, is the chairman of the
_Figaro_ Company, learned the news of her husband’s murder only the
day after it occurred. She had been away from Paris, and returned in
the evening of March 16. As she left the railway station she heard
the newspaper hawkers shouting the news, but believing that they were
announcing the fall of the Cabinet did not take sufficient interest
in the details to buy a paper. Next morning telegrams of condolence
from her friends, and perusal of the morning papers told her what had
happened, and incidentally apprised her that she inherited as his widow
a much larger share of Monsieur Calmette’s large fortune than would
otherwise have been hers. Gaston Calmette was of course a very rich
man, for some years ago Monsieur Chauchard, the founder and principal
shareholder of the _Magasins du Louvre_ had left him a large slice of
his great wealth. Paris gossip had, as I have said, been busy linking
the names of Messieurs Calmette and Caillaux, and this is not to be
wondered at when it is remembered that Monsieur Calmette was on the
point of being divorced, that Monsieur Caillaux had been divorced once
from Madame Gueydan-Caillaux, the divorced wife of Monsieur Dupré, and
that his present wife was the divorced wife of another man. Monsieur
Caillaux in his evidence to Monsieur Boucard declared, however, that
the stories of a disunion in his married life were absolute nonsense,
and that it was so absurd to say that there was any disunion between
him and his present wife that the two of them used to laugh at the
gossip to which I have referred. He added that there was no reason for
any personal animosity towards himself on Monsieur Calmette’s part, and
that he had never given him any reason for such animosity. “On several
occasions,” he said, “during the last few months I was asked to start a
campaign against Monsieur Calmette personally, and papers to support it
were brought to me. I always refused these offers.” Monsieur Caillaux
then spoke of the other documents in Monsieur Calmette’s possession.
These were of course the letter written by the Procureur Général,
Monsieur Victor Fabre, which Monsieur Barthou read in the Chamber of
Deputies on March 17, and other documents which are known as “the green
papers.” These were telegrams and copies of telegrams referring to
the incident of Agadir. They were of so grave a nature that Monsieur
Calmette had been asked not to publish them for diplomatic reasons. “I
should like to point out” (said Monsieur Caillaux), “that I could have
no possible fear personally of the publication of these documents. On
the contrary I should as far as I am myself concerned have been glad
to see them published. A day will come when time has smoothed over
old sores, and I shall be able to speak freely. I have written a book
on Agadir, and it will be seen when that can be published that the
documents, the letters, and the telegrams in this book will convince
all Frenchmen, not only of my patriotism, but of my political clearness
of vision.” Monsieur Caillaux declared that he knew exactly what was
going on in the _Figaro_ office, and that he knew that Monsieur
Calmette would make use of any weapons in his power to cause his
overthrow. He then referred to a conversation in the street under a
gas lamp between Monsieur Barthou and Madame Gueydan, his, Monsieur
Caillaux’s, former wife. During this conversation, he said, Madame
Gueydan had read extracts from letters to Monsieur Barthou, and
Monsieur Caillaux declared that he had understood from Monsieur Barthou
that these letters were the two private letters which had been stolen
from him. The examining magistrate confronted Monsieur Barthou and
Monsieur Caillaux at this point, and Monsieur Barthou stated that
Monsieur Caillaux must have been mistaken. It was true that he had
had a conversation with Madame Gueydan, but the letters she read to
him were the Fabre letter and the “Ton Jo” letter, and it was to them
that Monsieur Barthou had alluded afterwards in his conversation with
Monsieur Caillaux. When the “Ton Jo” letter appeared in the _Figaro_
on March 13 Monsieur Caillaux was greatly upset, although the more
personal portions of the letter had been cut. On the next day, Saturday
the 14th, he stated, he received an anonymous letter saying that the
_Figaro_ was going to publish the other two letters, and the same
day he received from other sources confirmation of this. “I had told
my wife all about these things,” he said. “She was entirely in my
confidence, and she expected these stolen letters to be published.
Their publication would have affected me comparatively little, but
would have wounded my wife in her dignity as a woman, and distressed
her more than I can say.” Monsieur Caillaux then told the examining
magistrate the events of the day of the murder as he knew them,
beginning with the statement that his wife’s nerves were shattered, and
that she was and had been for some time, in a state of considerable
over-excitement. She read the _Figaro_ every morning, her general
health was bad, and the campaign had overpowered her. “At nine o’clock
on the morning of March 16 my wife walked into my dressing-room with
the _Figaro_ in her hand,” said Monsieur Caillaux. “She showed me
the paper with a headline ‘Intermède Comique—Ton Jo.’ ‘Presently,’
she said, ‘we shall see your pet name for _me_ in the public Press
like this,’ and she threw the paper angrily on a chair. ‘Can’t you
put a stop to this campaign?’ she asked me. And we decided to consult
Monsieur Monier the President of the Civil Tribunal of the Seine.”
[Illustration: _Miroir, Photo, Paris_
M. BARTHOU MOUNTING THE STAIRS OF THE LAW COURTS ON HIS WAY
TO GIVE EVIDENCE IN THE CAILLAUX CASE]
“It was my intention to go and see him that day at half-past one, but
I forgot that he would be busy at the Palace of Justice at that time.
I had to go to the meeting of the Cabinet at the Elysée, and when
Monsieur Monier called at half-past ten my wife received him alone.”
Monsieur Caillaux then repeated his conversation with his wife when
she called for him before luncheon at the Ministère de Finances.
His evidence on this point and the evidence of Madame Caillaux are
identical. From the examining magistrate’s report of the evidence given
by Monsieur Caillaux he appears to have said nothing to his wife of his
own conversation with the President of the Republic. Monsieur Caillaux
confirms his wife’s statement that he said to her, “I shall go and
smash Calmette’s face.” Their car was in the Rue Royale when Madame
Caillaux asked him whether he intended to do so that day. “I answered,”
Monsieur Caillaux said, “No, not to-day. I shall choose my own time,
but the time is not far off.”
After luncheon, as Monsieur Caillaux was leaving the house, Madame
Caillaux told him that she was afraid she would not be able to dine at
the Italian Embassy. “She certainly looked ill and worn out,” Monsieur
Caillaux said, “and I asked her to send my servant to the Ministry
of Finance with my evening clothes. I understand that my wife sent a
telephone message to the Italian Embassy a little later to say that I
should go to the dinner without her. This, I would like to point out,
shows that she had no idea at that time of what was going to happen,
for if she had made up her mind then, she would either have said that
neither of us was going to the Italian Embassy or she would have said
nothing. I left my wife without any apprehensions, except that I was
uneasy at her weakness and the condition of her nerves. At about three
o’clock that afternoon I met Monsieur Ceccaldi at the Senate, and told
him how uneasy I felt. When I returned to the Ministry of Finance I
learned what had happened, and went to the police-station at once. My
wife’s first words to me when I got there and saw her were, ‘I _do_
hope that I haven’t killed him. I merely wanted to give him a lesson.’”
This was the end of Monsieur Caillaux’s evidence in the examining
magistrate’s room at the Palace of Justice on April 8, 1914.
Monsieur Privat-Deschanel was called and confirmed that portion of
it which referred to the burning of the Gueydan-Caillaux letters,
and the declaration by Monsieur Caillaux’s first wife that she had
kept no copies or photographs of them. “The scene,” said Monsieur
Privat-Deschanel, “was such a moving one, and impressed me so deeply,
that though it happened four years ago everything that was done and
every word that was spoken have remained graven on my memory.”
V
THE CAMPAIGN OF THE “FIGARO”
In order to understand the details of the Caillaux drama, it is
necessary to search for the reasons which contributed to the bitter
campaign in the _Figaro_ against Madame Caillaux’s husband, the
Minister of Finance. In order to understand these reasons fully it will
be necessary to go some way back into the history of French politics,
when some insight will be possible into the inner meaning of the
campaign, into the interests which lay behind it, and the reason of its
bitterness. When Monsieur Raymond Poincaré was elected President of the
French Republic, his election gave great offence to that breaker of
Cabinets, the veteran statesman Georges Clemenceau. Monsieur Clemenceau
had been a supporter of Monsieur Poincaré’s rival, Monsieur Pams, and
resented deeply the election of the man whom he had not backed. Soon
after the presidential election the new President of the Republic gave
another cause for offence to Monsieur Clemenceau by choosing Monsieur
Louis Barthou as Prime Minister.
Monsieur Clemenceau vowed revenge, and true to his invariable system
of playing the Eminence Grise in French politics, he buried the
hatchet with Monsieur Caillaux, whom during the Agadir crisis he had
openly declared to be liable to a trial before the high court for high
treason, and with Monsieur Briand’s help did everything possible to
make matters uncomfortable for Monsieur Barthou and his Cabinet, and
for the man whose policy that Cabinet represented, the new President of
the French Republic, Monsieur Raymond Poincaré.
The campaign was almost a French War of the Roses. It was conducted
with bitterness on either side, and the Clemenceau faction won the
first battle, overthrowing the Barthou Cabinet, and securing the return
to power of Monsieur Caillaux, while Monsieur Briand, by his own choice
stood aside. Nominally the new Cabinet was under the leadership of the
Prime Minister, Monsieur Gaston Doumergue.