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MY MEMOIRS
[Illustration: MADAME STEINHEIL
_Photo by Claude Harris, London_]
MY MEMOIRS
BY
MARGUERITE STEINHEIL
ILLUSTRATED
New York
STURGIS & WALTON
COMPANY
1912
Copyright 1912
By STURGIS & WALTON COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped. Published April, 1912
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I CHILDHOOD 1
II YOUTH--MY FATHER'S DEATH--MY MARRIAGE 15
III ARRIVAL IN PARIS. A SEPARATION. MARTHE. PARISIAN LIFE 29
IV MY SALON 38
V MY SALON (_continued_) 54
VI FÉLIX FAURE 68
VII THE DREYFUS AFFAIR--FASHODA 84
VIII THE MYSTERIOUS PEARL NECKLACE--THE DEATH OF FÉLIX FAURE 106
IX AFTER PRESIDENT FAURE'S DEATH: THE DOCUMENTS--THE NECKLACE 116
X 1899-1908 127
XI EVENTS THAT PRECEDED THE CRIME 135
XII MAY 1908 149
XIII THE FATAL NIGHT 160
XIV AFTER THE MURDER 173
XV THE BLACK GOWNS 195
XVI INVESTIGATIONS 208
XVII THE THRONE-ROOM 221
XVIII M. CHARLES SAUERWEIN AND THE ROSSIGNOL AFFAIR 236
XIX The Pearl in the Pocket-book 249
XX THE SO-CALLED "NIGHT OF THE CONFESSION" (NOVEMBER 25-26, 1908) 269
XXI MY ARREST 286
XXII THE THREE CELLS 294
XXIII ALBA GHIRELLI, MARGUERITE ROSSELLI AND THE "MATIN" 310
XXIV SAINT-LAZARE 330
XXV THE "INSTRUCTION" 342
XXVI THE LAST "INSTRUCTION" 362
XXVII THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-THREE DAYS IN PRISON 374
XXVIII THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-THREE DAYS IN PRISON (_continued_) 398
XXIX THE TRIAL 416
XXX THE SPEECH FOR THE PROSECUTION--THE SPEECH FOR THE DEFENCE 437
XXXI AFTER THE VERDICT 456
XXXII CONCLUSION 474
ILLUSTRATIONS
Madame Steinheil _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
Writing my Memoirs 1
My Father 16
My Mother 16
Bonnat--by Himself 44
My Daughter and Myself in 1901 60
President Félix Faure 72
A Letter sent me by Félix Faure 78
The Félix Faure Talisman 82
The Gold Box in which President Faure sent me the Pearl Necklace 110
Invitation to the Félix Faure "In Memoriam Service" 116
My Husband, M. Steinheil, in 1898 122
A letter sent me by Massenet in 1907 132
Facsimile of the letter I sent to my Mother at Beaucourt a
few days before the Crime 150
A view of the verandah of the house in the Impasse Ronsin 162
The Bed on which I was bound during the "Fatal Night" 166
The Desk in the Boudoir from which the Money and the
dummy-parcel of Documents were stolen on May 30-31 182
A view of the House in the Impasse Ronsin 224
M. de Balincourt and Remy Couillard 252
Alexandre Wolff and his Mother, Mariette Wolff 262
M. André, my Examining Magistrate 348
My Cell, showing Juliette, my fellow prisoner, seated on her bed 382
In the prison yard at Saint-Lazare 386
Objects I used in Prison 410
My Counsel, Maître A. Aubin; The Judge, M. de Valles;
and the Advocate General, M. Trouard Riolle 450
Plan of the first floor of the house in the Impasse Ronsin 479
[Illustration:
_Photo. by Claude Harris, London_
WRITING MY MEMOIRS]
CHAPTER I
CHILDHOOD
(_"Monsieur et Madame Edouard Japy have the honour to inform you of the
birth of a daughter." Beaucourt, April, 16th, 1869._)
Beaucourt is a village in the "Belfort Territory," not far from the
Swiss and German frontiers. It was in that village, at the "Château
Edouard"--all large mansions in that region are called "châteaux," and
the name of the owner is added to the word--that I was born some forty
years ago.
Beaucourt and nearly all of the surrounding country belongs to, or is
dependent upon, the Japy family, whose vast factories and mills give a
living to thousands of workmen.
After a family quarrel, my father, Edouard Japy, had severed his
connection with "Japy Bros." some time before my birth. Having resigned
his directorship of the Company, he busied himself exclusively with his
huge estate, devoting his days to the farm and woods, to his beloved
park and the picturesque cascades which he had designed himself, to his
flowers and orchards, to his family and to music.
My mother was the daughter of the innkeeper of the Red Lion, the chief
inn of Montbéliard in those already distant days. Edouard Japy had
married Mlle. Emilie Rau in spite of the opposition of his family, who
had declared that such a marriage would be a _mésalliance_. He had
married her--as he often told me when, as a young girl, I became more
than his child: his friend and confidante--because "she was very
beautiful and very good." My mother had dark eyes, large and very
tender, and her raven-black hair, when loosed, streamed down to her
feet. She was of a quiet and sunny nature, kind, serene, and smiling.
She ignored evil, was exquisitely artless, and never understood a great
deal of the realities of life, because she did not see them. She gave
away and spent without counting, was indulgent in a manner as touching
as it was unconscious, and went through life a simple and happy being,
knowing neither great exultation nor deep depression, incapable of
sustained effort or serious worry. Edouard adored Emilie, Emilie adored
Edouard, and all was for the best in the best of all possible worlds.
The man who was to be my father having decided--and he had both will and
charm--that Mlle. Rau should be his wife, managed to have her sent to a
boarding-school at Stuttgart, so that she might complete her education.
Mlle. Rau was then fourteen years old. Two years later she became Madame
Japy. Her husband was then twenty-five.
I do not intend to sketch here the history of the Japys of Beaucourt;
but after having given a few details about my parents, I may add a few
about my grandparents, if only to satisfy the curiosity of those who
believe as much in atavism as in heredity.
The first Japys who "matter" were two brothers, the grandfather and
great-uncle of my father. The one, an inventor of genius, at first
turned his attention to clocks and then to all kinds of machine
tools--screwing, planing, riveting, bolting, boring, and so on. He
created; his brother organised. The first had ideas; the second rendered
them practical and profitable. I will not say any more about the
financier and company-promoter, but the following story about the
inventor is well worth telling: He had built for himself a small house,
"on stilts," as it were. Below the floor of the large and only room,
there was nothing but--air, and then the grass of the meadow. The
inventor reached his retreat with the help of a rope ladder, which he
withdrew when he had climbed up to his famous "idea-room." There, safe
from intrusion, he worked, day after day, and for his meals was
satisfied with a little bread and cheese. It was generally dark before
he returned to earth and joined his wife, who, I have been told, was
strikingly beautiful.
Later, the children of those two brothers, developed the already
important undertaking of their fathers, and gradually the firm Japy
Frères became what it is to-day, one of the largest and strongest
industrial concerns in France.
I was educated by resident governesses and professors. One of the
governesses, questioned thirty-five years later, was to declare that at
the age of five, I used to lie a good deal but that I succeeded in being
forgiven, thanks to my "talents as an actress."
At my trial in the Paris Assize Court, the Public Prosecutor made a
great deal out of this evidence, and saw therein a sure sign of my
precocious depravity.
Personally, I believe that all normal children tell fibs, more or less,
and I am delighted to think that I was a normal little girl. As for my
talent as an actress, I have since seen too many little girls of five to
believe seriously in it. I smile, and I proceed....
My father looked after my education with charming care. My brother and
my sisters were brought up in boarding-schools, but my school was at
home, in a large room on the first floor. I still see that light and
beautiful room, overlooking our park, the trees of which, alive with
birds, were so often the cause of much inattention to my work. I see the
two blackboards, the one covered at regular intervals with detested
figures and the other written over with words and sentences or the names
of places and people. My father, wearing a stern expression, kept
entering the room to see "how the little one was getting on," and
invariably had some recommendation to make: "Since you are telling her
about the Odyssey, make her follow Ulysses' travels on a map," or "I see
you are reading the Iliad, pray insist on Andromache, Hector, Achilles,
but skip whenever you come to Nestor; he was a fool and a bore."...
"Promise to take her to Domrémy if she learns to love Joan of Arc."...
"You are studying Napoleon.... Wait one moment, I'll fetch an album of
Raffet's drawings for her."... "What, you are drawing in this room, in
this weather! Run down into the garden: that's the ideal place where to
draw"... and I always thought my father was absolutely right.
There was a large globe in my schoolroom, and quite a library of
travel-books. Ah! the tropics, the flowers, the birds! Ah! to see the
birds of Paradise in Borneo, or humming-birds in Brazil! To gather
orchids in Central Africa or in Queensland... I adore two rivers: the
Orinoco and the Brahmaputra, and two mountains: Kilimanjaro and
Popocatapetl, because of their extraordinary names! My favourite heroes
were Hannibal and--Napoleon, of course.
My father began to teach me the violin when I was four, and the piano
and the organ the following year. He had his own ideas on the education
of girls, but applied them to me only. When I was a mere child, he
taught me to bow, to arrange flowers, and to recognise and appreciate
things beautiful, ancient or rare--old furniture, old tapestries, old
china, old pewter. He showed me the hall-marks on silver, he made me
caress cameos and enamel-work and touch embroideries and old lace
reverently. He made me go up and down a staircase ten, twenty times in
succession: "You see, darling, any one can go down steps without being
ridiculous, but to go up a staircase, that's another matter. Now then,
come down--that's it--raise your head--go slowly--like a queen in books
of long ago. Look as though you came down from Heaven and had wings, and
didn't press upon the carpet!" And he added gaily, "when I go down a
staircase, I feel as if I were an emperor descending towards his loving
people! You ought to imagine a long train behind you, held by two little
eighteenth-century negroes, twenty steps above." And the lessons went on
again: "Now walk upstairs. Lightly, lightly, little one! Don't move your
arms. Now turn your head round... Ah! there's a pretty picture! By the
way, you must dress your hair in another way. And what is that gold
bracelet round your wrist! A flower, that's the only jewel you may wear
at present, Mademoiselle!"
He designed my dresses, and later on he insisted that I should learn to
make them myself. He gave me a riding-master, a violin teacher and a
piano teacher, besides the various governesses who taught me the "other
things," but it was with him and through him that I learned the little I
have learned. His was a beautiful life, and there sang in my young heart
those words which my father often whispered in my ear: "I love you every
day more than yesterday and less than to-morrow." I looked upon my
father as a kind of marvellously beneficent Deity. Sometimes I heard it
said that he was "not practical," but I pitied those who criticised him.
If he hated to calculate, that was his own affair, after all! Though
warned of the catastrophe which never befell him, he remained cheerful,
kind and generous. Our house was known as "_La Maison du Bon Dieu_."
Every one was welcome there, and my father, who was a gourmet, and had a
remarkable chef, treated his guests to feasts worthy of Lucullus, and to
the best wines in his cellars--under one condition, invariably the same:
that they should listen to the concert in the drawing-room, afterwards.
My father kept my mother's whole family, paid the debts of his friends,
and did his utmost to assist any one and every one. Whenever he passed
through a village round Beaucourt, men, women, and children would appear
at the windows or doors of their cottages, and greet him with a sign, a
word, or a smile of gratitude. And I used to sit as close to him as
possible, in the trap; I was proud and happy and felt like shouting to
the good villagers: "You know, he is my daddy!"
Dear father! they were to slander him, too, at my trial. A member of his
own family asserted that he was a brute and a drunkard. And when I
revolted against such an abominable statement, my counsel tried to
appease me. "Don't take any notice," he muttered. "The statement, it
seems, has been made to save you at any cost. Being the daughter of a
drunkard, you could be considered, to some extent, as irresponsible. It
was tactics, not an insult!"
In my memory I can see next to my father the lovable figure of M.
Doriand, my parents' "old" and my "great" friend.
M. Doriand was a professor in the Empress's College for girls at Moscow,
and his conversation was a rare delight. He came every year to spend
his holidays with us. He remained three months at Beaucourt, and during
the rest of the year sent us a long letter every week. In the summer,
when he was with us, he made me read over again all the lessons I had
taken since the previous summer, and he discussed them so wittily and
opened up to me such new horizons, retold me history in such a
fascinating and personal manner, and managed to render mathematics so
interesting, that I never thought of complaining of the unusual way of
making me spend my holidays.
Then he painted very well, and gave me lessons in watercolours. He
developed in me such a keen taste for art that later on my father
decided I should attend an art school.
My "great friend" or my "grandpapa from Russia," as I often called him,
had exquisite manners. When, many years later, I became what is called a
"woman of the world," and even a Paris "Society Queen," if I may quote a
term so often applied to me, I was able to judge the various types of
people who composed that Society and their manners, and I realised then
that M. Doriand did not belong to his time. He had the exquisite
politeness of the "honest" people of the _grand siècle_. I still see him
bowing with easy grace whenever he met my mother, my sisters or me.
Never did a vulgar or trivial word pass from his lips. He loved what he
called, not "beautiful" French, but "good" French. He had for the most
humble the same little attentions and the same gentle and old-time
courteousness as for his peers. He addressed his aged sister, who
resided near Beaucourt, as he would have a queen, for he believed that
nowhere more than in the home were perfect manners and courteous speech
more becoming, and that to no one more than to his own people did a man
owe respect. He took off his hat when he met the women about the farm,
and never kept it on in a shop. He spoke slowly and softly, and
cultivated the _mot propre_ (the exact word). It was a joy to hear him,
as much to the ear as to the mind. As long as I remained under his
influence, I tried to speak as he did; but destiny took me to Paris,
where, alas! they speak Parisian, not French.
My grandpapa from Russia seemed to know everything and to be able to do
anything. He would, for instance, talk to me for an hour about a
tragedy of Voltaire, which he afterwards compared with a tragedy of his
beloved Racine; or perhaps a book by some little known Russian author,
whom he placed far above the work of many celebrated writers--German,
French or English. Then he would suddenly tell me the life of a plant at
our feet or the story of the stone on which he sat. Afterwards, we would
go to the kitchen, and there he taught me how to prepare some kind of
soup or sweet dish _à la Russe_. When this was over we would go to the
music-room and there I had to sing or play to him an air by Mozart,
Glück, Lulli, or Rameau. He used to say: "You will play the music of
Beethoven and Wagner (he, like my father, had already recognised
Wagner's genius) when you are older. One must have suffered and loved to
understand these geniuses." He taught me to sculpture, to bind books, to
solder....
My father joined us and said: "My dear Doriand, you are monopolising my
daughter. You have had her to yourself the whole morning."
"How dare you complain," the other retorted; "you have her the whole of
the year."
How delightfully they spoiled me, those two dear souls, and how
coquettish they made me! I recall them sitting on an old rustic bench in
the large avenue of chestnut-trees. I felt that they were talking about
me, and I ran into the house to put on my most becoming dress, and then
went out and walked up and down slowly, with a book in my hand, and not
too far from them, and knowing all the while that their eyes were
following me! There did not seem to be any harm in this, but one day, my
mother catching me at my little game, scolded me and my father and his
old friend much more.... As a rule, when my dear mother scolded them, my
father went to the organ and improvised a war-march and M. Doriand,
standing near him, turned imaginary pages. My mother could not help
laughing and we guilty three did the same, of course.
I had two sisters, Juliette, the eldest--who, when I was a little girl,
became the wife of M. Herr, an engineer then residing in Bayonne, where,
later, I met M. Steinheil--and Mimi, younger than I by four years, who
was my mother's favourite, just as I was my father's. I had also a
brother, Julien, who enlisted in an infantry regiment at Belfort and
became there the friend of M. Sheffer, who was to be my _fiancé_ of a
few months.
We rose early at Beaucourt. After a quick breakfast and an hour given to
recreation in the park, or to the care of my flowers--like my parents, I
had a passion for flowers, especially hydrangea and roses--I went to the
schoolroom for my lessons. The afternoon was divided between study,
games and household duties. In the evening, after dinner, we had music
in the large _salon_, the very one which during the war, the Germans
sacked and threw into confusion.... Ah! it was awe-inspiring to hear my
father describe their stay at the "castle" and tell us how this splendid
drawing-room had been turned by those "Prussians" into a kitchen, the
grand piano into a larder and the precious curtains of antique red
damask into horse blankets and dish-cloths....
There was always a large number of guests at home. The three-storied
house had forty rooms and they were more often occupied than empty. Our
evening concerts were my father's great joy. He sat at the organ, the
enormous and rubicund Mme. Koger, my piano teacher, settled down at the
piano, I took my violin and three or four musicians from Belfort,
violinists and 'cellists, completed our little orchestra.
During the winter--and the winter is extremely sharp in that part of
France--we used to skate on the Rhone-Rhine Canal, or we went for long
rides in a sleigh, on the roads deep in snow. And then, we tobogganned.
A "train" of tobogganners was formed at the top of a hill with a
"captain" at its head; we rushed at break-neck speed down the hill-side,
the train broke up, the toboggans overturned and hurled us into the
snow, when a free fight ensued over the responsibility for the accident.
I generally triumphed over my cousins, both boys and girls, and was
rather proud of it!
Had the examining magistrate in charge of my case known this detail, he
would no doubt have come to the conclusion that, since, as a child, I
was strong enough to be victorious, with snowballs, over my playmates,
it was clear that, as a woman, I must have been strong enough to commit
the horrible crimes of which he accused me!
Winter also brought with it an increased number of visits, to the sick
and poor, and as my mother never allowed me to give them anything that I
had not worked at myself, not a day passed without our devoting at least
one or two hours to preparing warm clothes for the needy. As for my
father, he had a wonderful knack of saying and doing the right thing
whenever he called on the people he looked after, and this made it one
of my happiest occupations to accompany him on this round of mercy.
Christmas was a great day to us. The Christmas tree, which my father
always uprooted himself--it was almost a ceremony with him--was first
lit up for the family, then for the servants and farmhands, and a third
time for the poor people who came in crowds from the neighbouring
villages, and whom my parents received one after another with a word of
welcome and a pleasant personal remark which at once put them at their
ease.
On January 1 we paid "morning" calls until 2 P.M. In all the houses
where we went, the hosts and hostesses wished to detain my father for
"at least an hour," for he was gay and charming, good to look upon and
his kindness was proverbial... but he refused: "No, no--I must go, my
dear friends; I have still so many visits to pay--for instance, I must
call on this rascal here (and he laughingly dealt a blow at a friend
close to him) whom I have already passed three times on the road and met
in five drawing-rooms this morning. But there you are, I must, mustn't
I, you rogue, express my good wishes for a happy New Year to him in his
own house--and to think that afterwards I shall meet him again in half a
dozen places and that, to cap it all, I will have to go home to receive
him, so that he may return my good wishes. Ah! the old traditions!..."
Then came the family dinner, which lasted till the evening and the day
ended with... music, of course. While we played, my mother slumbered
peacefully in a fine old arm-chair, where once had sat my
great-grandmother, the beautiful wife of the inventor.... But we went
to bed early, for on the previous night we had hardly slept at all.
In fact, a few minutes before midnight, on December 31, songs rose under
the windows of the "castle"--beautiful songs, simple, broad-winged, with
words which varied a little from year to year, but with music centuries
old, and always the same, for it could not have been improved upon.
Then, surrounded by their children and their servants, my parents
received the singers on the threshold of their house. The singers shook
the snow from their coats and their fur caps, took off their wooden
shoes, shook hands with us all, and the feast began. My father
distributed among them baskets of apples and walnuts, whole hams,
strings of sausages, sacks of potatoes, and Alsatian cakes. And when the
good people had gone and their voices could no longer be heard--my
father wrapped me up in furs and we went together to look at the snow.
And somehow, it always seemed more wonderful and more blue to us on New
Year's night. My father told me marvellous tales and I did not feel
sleepy at all. But an hour later, assuming a gruff voice, he exclaimed:
"What does this mean, Mademoiselle? Still up at three in the morning at
your age." When he had gently carried me in his arms to my room, he
said: "Go quickly to sleep, 'Puppele' (an Alsatian expression meaning
'little doll'), mother would be angry if she knew."
Mother knew perfectly well, for she had been waiting by the fireside in
the dining-room and she never retired without having seen me in my bed
and kissed me. But she was not angry on this occasion, and with her
sweet, indulgent philosophy she said: "After all, there is but one First
of January in the year."
On Sundays we attended service in the Temple of Beaucourt. The district
is a Protestant one, a very Protestant one indeed. My first pastor was
old M. Cuvier, a descendant of the great naturalist Baron Cuvier, who
died in 1832.
He was very handsome and impressive, was Pastor Cuvier, with his mane of
white hair and his gleaming eyes under the bushy eyebrows. My father
used to tell me that he looked like Liszt, whom he had met on several
occasions in Germany and Hungary, and in Paris. The old clergyman was a
great orator, and although I did not always understand what he said, I
loved to listen to him. He often called on us, and, in order to tease
him, my father, a staunch Huguenot but broad-minded and endowed with a
sense of humour, made him sit at the table next to the Catholic priest
of Beaucourt. At the beginning of the dinner the two men hardly dared
look at one another, and could hardly eat, much to my mother's alarm....
M. Cuvier said, "Let us not talk religion," and the priest added, "Nor
politics." My father remarked, "You are both quite right"... and
forthwith he started eulogising Darwin's theories and explaining to his
two guests the law of natural selection and how it was quite evident
that "each species was not independently created."... But all ended
well, thanks to the good-humour of my father, the smiling grace of my
mother, and the excellent wines and liqueurs in our cellars.
Old Pastor Cuvier was very kind to me. He often received me at his
house, which stood opposite the wood in our estate. He had in his
library all the works of his illustrious ancestor, and writing down the
names on a slip of paper, which I have kept through all these years, he
made me promise that I would read, when I was grown-up, the "Tableau
Elémentaire de l'Histoire Naturelle des Animaux" and the "Règne Animal
distribué d'après son Organisation." I promised, of course, but did not
keep my promise. May the two Cuviers, the naturalist and the pastor,
forgive me!
M. Cuvier was fond of relating some episodes--within my
understanding--of the Revolution and the First Empire. He talked about
the Terror as though he had lived through those dreadful days, and about
Napoleon as though he had known him intimately. We went several times to
Montbéliard together to visit the Cuvier Museum there, and he would
stand in contemplation before the great man's enormous and very dirty
cap. And my pastor would exclaim: "What a head! What a head!"
He so often talked to me about a certain book by Cuvier on elephants
that the thought of elephants haunted me and I begged my father to show
me one. And so it was that I went, when I was a little girl, to Paris.
The elephant I saw there pleased me very much, although I would have
liked it to have been more savage; and, in spite of a ride on the back
of the great beast, I was somewhat disappointed.
My pastor was very, very old, and his son came to assist him in his
work, but both left Beaucourt after a short time. The son, like
thousands of Protestants in the Jura and Switzerland at the time, was a
Monodist, and believed that Monod, the great preacher and revivalist,
was Christ himself.... M. Cuvier died in Switzerland. A new pastor came
to Beaucourt, M. Bach, and I became in time the organist of his church
and the leader of the choir.
Three times a week the band organised by my father came to rehearse at
our house. Chamber-music did not quite satisfy him, and he had founded
this band, which numbered forty-five musicians. Ah! those rehearsals.
When the weather was fair they took place under the chestnut trees, but
if it rained or snowed the "forty-five" and their conductor would gather
in the main drawing-room of the "castle," where two hundred people could
have been seated comfortably, or in the dining-room, to the pathetic
despair of my mother, who would ask my father: "Don't you think,
Edouard, that your band is just a little too noisy?" My father kissed
her laughingly, flourished the baton, and the rehearsal began.
One of my father's greatest delights, and mine, too, was to travel
together. After my fourteenth birthday he took me to Italy, to Germany,
and to Switzerland, where we went round the Léman (he forbade me to say
Lake of Geneva); and, of course, we continued to pay our periodical
visits to Belfort, Nancy and Bâle.
It was in Belfort that I heard an opera for the first time. This was
_Faust_. My father, who was a friend of Gounod, had told me all kinds of
things about Gounod's "nice" music, but I was not half as impressed as I
thought I should be. Perhaps it was because Faust was too stout, because
Valentine sang too loudly as he died, because Mephistopheles was not
diabolical enough, and perhaps, too, owing to the fact that Marguerite's
spinning-wheel, having been mislaid, had been replaced at the eleventh
hour by a--sewing-machine. And to think that they could have found a
spinning-wheel in almost any house of the neighbourhood!
It was also at Belfort that I met M. Thiers, with whom my father was
well acquainted. This "meeting" took place, I believe, in 1877. I had to
hand a huge bouquet to M. Thiers. Every one was calling him "The
Liberator and the Saviour of France," and those words so fixed
themselves in my mind that I quite forgot the little speech I had
learned by heart; and when M. Thiers stepped from his carriage, I handed
him the bouquet and said, "There you are, Mr. Saviour" (_Monsieur le
Sauveur_). The little fat and ugly man with the round head, the beady
eyes, and the spectacles, took the bouquet, lifted me up and kissed me.
Later on he spent an evening at our house, and naturally I asked for a
story. Thereupon, describing some wonderful ceremony, he mentioned
Napoleon, sixteen horses drawing a funeral car, and a magnificent palace
with a golden cupola, near the Seine, in Paris.... And years later, I
realised that Thiers had been telling me about the translation of
Napoleon's ashes to the Invalids, in the days of King Louis-Philippe,
when he was Prime Minister.
We used to go for long walks or rides, my father and I. We both loved to
feel the wind in our faces, and we took joy in the smell of the earth,
the smell of grass, the voice of the trees. Often he went out without
me, but as soon as I was free from my work I went in search of him,
fastening the ribbons of my big straw hat as I ran over hill and dale.
Instinct led me in the right direction, and in time I found him, and
rushing up, rested in his arms, which was ever my way of greeting him.
We returned home together, and on the way never failed to admire our
favourite old trees, to linger by the lakes we liked best, to gather
ferns and foxglove, and to go at least once round the greenhouses.
And we had endless surprises, and we laughed at everything, often for no
reason at all. A word, a common thought, the shape of a leaf or of a
cloud, sent us into fits of ecstasy or laughter. And my father would
kiss me and whisper: "We get on well together, we two, don't we,
Puppele;" and I would answer: "I love you, _my_ daddy."
"Quite right, too," he would say. "Try to love me as long as you
possibly can. A father like the one you own is worth all the husbands in
the world."
What happy days! What a lovely life! How everything smiled on me, how
everything seemed good and simple.... Alas! a few years later
disenchantment was to begin, bringing in its wake, temptations,
weaknesses, struggles and sorrows; and finally the whole fabric of my
life was to be brought crashing down in a terrible, "sensational"
drama....
I fear that this note of poignant sadness and regret will sound again
and again in these pages like a melancholy and distressing
_leit-motiv_.... But how could it be otherwise? How could I fail to
realise, in an intensely painful and bitter manner, all that I have lost
and all that I have suffered unjustly, when I recall my childhood and my
radiant youth, and the days spent in Beaucourt with a mother infinitely
loving and a father passionately devoted, and when I compare those years
of happiness with the feverish, tangled years that followed and that
resulted, after the appalling catastrophe in which I lost my husband and
my mother, both foully done to death, in my being tried and imprisoned
in Paris on a double charge of murder.