AFTER PRESIDENT FAURE'S DEATH: THE DOCUMENTS--THE NECKLACE
I had been seriously ill for six weeks and had only just recovered when
the death of Félix Faure occurred. The shock caused a relapse, and I was
unable to attend the President's funeral, which took place on Thursday,
February 23rd.
I had lost a great friend, and France a great patriot. It was said that
President Faure was a lighthearted optimist, that he had no control
worth speaking of over the various political parties striving around
him, and finally that he was a mere figure-head, a chief of State, but
not a statesman--an ornamental President rather than a man of great
ideas or a man of action.
It cannot be denied that Félix Faure was astoundingly fortunate and that
when he saw that things always "went well" with him, he became almost
irritatingly self-confident and was perhaps inclined to be fastidious in
the performance of his Presidential duties. He loved pageantry, and he
revelled in the pomp and circumstance of his office, especially when he
came in close contest with a King or an Emperor. He looked the part of
"The First Magistrate of the Country" to perfection, being tall,
handsome, refined in manner, and dignified to the verge of aloofness.
But he had many worthy qualities: he was endowed with much common
sense--a quality which too many lacked in France during the time of the
_Affaire Dreyfus_--and he was an ardent--a zealous, patriot. He had a
rare gift of sympathy, and there can be no doubt that he considerably
increased the prestige of France during his Presidency, in spite of
his inexplicable attitude in the Dreyfus affair, in spite of the Fashoda
humiliation, and in spite of Zola's letter, "I accuse," and the fierce
attacks of Clémenceau, Reinach, Jaurès, and many others. He had more
enemies than any President ever had, including Declassé, himself another
staunch Dreyfusard, in whose talents as a diplomatist he had such
confidence. Félix Faure had bitter enemies not only in the Cabinets
which succeeded one another with such "eloquent" rapidity during his
Presidency, but even in his own _entourage_ at the Elysée.
[Illustration: INVITATION TO THE FELIX FAURE "IN MEMORIAM" SERVICE]
He loved the army. He had fought bravely during the war with Germany; he
believed in the absolute righteousness of the court-martial which tried
Dreyfus, and he did his utmost to prevent a "Revision" of the trial. He
was a downright honest and sincere man, and believed he was working for
the greatness of the country he loved so ardently.
* * * * *
Human malignity knows no limit or pity. Less than twenty-four hours
after the death of the President, a number of newspapers coolly
suggested that Félix Faure had been poisoned by a certain Protestant
friend of his, a Mme. S. Others said by an actress whose name began with
S, and others by a Jewish lady. But they mostly pointed to me as the
murderess of Félix Faure, although in very cautious and veiled terms,
and without ever giving my name. I had called at the Elysée during the
afternoon of February 16th. The whole tragedy seemed quite clear... to
certain people. I had been appointed by some secret committee of
Dreyfusards, on account of the President's sympathy for me, to
"suppress" the man who was supposed to be the great stumbling block in
the way of the "Revision." Being ill and worn, I had no inclination to
read the newspapers during those days, and might always have ignored
those shameless rumours, but hundreds of kind souls sent me the cuttings
containing the venomous allusions, and at the same time, shoals of
anonymous letters reached me, in which assassin, poisoner, Lucretia, and
Brinvilliers were perhaps the least cruel and offensive epithets hurled
at me. Certain writers declared that if I had not killed the President,
at least I knew when he died and who had killed him, and that dire
calamities would befall me unless I revealed the name. A few letters
mentioned the papers of Félix Faure, and said that if I knew where they
were and could obtain possession of them, I ought to publish them,
because their publication would serve the purposes of the
Anti-Dreyfusards to which party I no doubt belonged, since my great
friend the President had never shown any sympathy with the champions of
the "traitor." Other letters entreated me to serve the Dreyfusards by
burning such documents as might compromise their cause, whilst others,
also originating from Dreyfusards, suggested that I should hand the
papers to "So-and-so," who would examine them and decide which ought to
be published.... And each letter ended with vile threats if I did not
follow the anonymous writer's advice!...
In those painful hours, the trust and sympathy of a number of friends,
Bonnat the chief amongst them, helped me to overcome the shame which
oppressed me. I received tactful messages of sincere sympathy from
hundreds of persons who had been revolted by this infamous press
campaign. There also came a charming letter from Mlle. Lucie Faure, to
whom I had sent my condolences on the death of her beloved father, at
the same time promising to assist her, as in the past, in her charitable
works, especially the "Fraternal Legion of the Children of France."
But all these messages of sympathy did not put an end to the
insinuations in certain journals. The very horror of them gave me
strength. I forgot my physical sufferings and went from one magistrate
to another among my acquaintances. All told me that since my name was
not mentioned it would be impossible to prosecute the offending papers,
and that since the letters I received were anonymous, and written either
in capitals or with the left hand, it would be most difficult to trace
those who had sent them to me. True, one newspaper had mentioned the
"wife of a painter," but there were scores of married painters whose
name began with the letter S. The only wise policy was for me to ignore
all insults and threats. The absurd rumours would soon die out, and the
anonymous letters would soon cease to reach me. Besides it was, all of
it, simply an indirect result of the Dreyfus agitation which aroused the
worst passions and caused some men to stop at nothing.
I consulted M. P., a "State Councillor," and an old friend of mine about
the documents. Should I keep them, send them to Mme. Faure, or destroy
them?
M. P. hesitated, and at last replied: "If the papers were in my
possession and had been entrusted to me by the late President, I do not
think I should venture to destroy them. They might be useful.... But I
should certainly hide them in a safe place at home.... By the way, who,
besides me, knows that you wrote those memoirs with the President, and
that they are in your possession?"
"It is difficult to answer. There are a few persons who saw Félix Faure
writing with me at the Elysée, and on a few occasions I have been
followed when leaving the Palace with a bundle of papers under my
arm...."
"Evidently some indiscretion has been committed. But I should not take
any notice. The President was perfectly free to write the more or less
'secret' story of the Third Republic, and with whomsoever he chose. He
was at liberty to entrust those papers to your care or to give them to
you, and you are fully entitled to keep them.... At any rate, I should
keep them if I were you."
The next morning my valet came to say that M. Blondel (Félix Faure's
private secretary) wished to see me. I had just received a further batch
of anonymous letters and felt greatly depressed. M. Blondel, who had
been so devoted to the President and so kind to me, tried to calm me,
and then said: "Let me tell you what happened after your departure from
the Elysée on the fatal day, and give the President's final message to
you.... The President sat in his study and felt much better. I sent,
however, as I had promised you, for a doctor.... There was one at the
Elysée. He came, and found the President very weak, but not, he thought,
in any danger. After the doctor had left the room, the President, to my
intense surprise, said: 'If I feel worse, or if, as Dr. Potain has
often warned me, I die suddenly, I want you to see that the talisman,
which she gave me and which I always wear, be handed back to Mme.
Steinheil.' Shortly afterwards he began to feel bad again, and a priest
was sent for. It was then about seven o'clock, I think. After he had
received the priest he handed me the talisman and whispered: 'I think I
am lost.... Let all those who cared for me forgive my enemies as I
forgive them myself....' Other doctors came; then Mme. Faure and her
daughters.... Forgive me if I give you no more details. It would be too
painful for you--and for me."
I had designed the talisman myself at the request of Félix Faure. It was
a gold locket bearing the initials F. F. upon a diamond anchor, and was
set with tiny pearls, rubies and sapphires to recall the tricolour. The
word engraved upon the anchor, a friendly term, was in Russian, because
the President liked everything that recalled his visit to St. Petersburg
and the Alliance with Russia.
Having placed the locket in a drawer, I returned to M. Blondel and said:
"Tell me the truth. You know what tragic rumours were abroad in Paris
like wild-fire, soon after the death of the President. How is it then,
that, if there was any suspicion of foul play, there was no autopsy? The
_Journal Officiel_ said: 'The President of the Republic died yesterday
at 10 P.M., struck down with _apoplexie foudroyante_.' How could you
reconcile that official statement of sudden death with what you have
just told me; at seven o'clock the President already thought himself
dying and sent for a priest. Why was there no autopsy?..."
"Because it was the wish of Mme. Faure, and the Premier himself agreed."
M. Blondel was deeply moved, and I shared his emotion. I realised that
he could not say anything more, or had nothing more to say.... And we
parted....
The mystery of Félix Faure's death thus remained unsolved. I have more
than once tried to solve it, but in vain. My opinion, however, is this:
The President, as he himself admitted on the last time I saw him, had
taken, or was given, that afternoon, and long before my flying visit to
him, a large dose of his dangerous "remedy." He had often been warned
that it might one day prove fatal--and it did.
It is a terrible thing to have to say, but when, a few months after the
murder of my husband and my mother, I was arrested and imprisoned, the
infamous accusations against me concerning the President's death were
again circulated. When my counsel told me so I insisted upon a full
inquiry into the matter, and M. Albanel, the judge, was appointed.... He
made the fullest possible investigations and, I need hardly add, I was
completely exonerated.
* * * * *
On the evening of the day after the funeral of President Faure, my
husband came into my room, and closed the door carefully. He was
trembling and pale. "You know," he began, "that we agreed, years ago,
that, although living under the same roof, you and I should be entirely
free to act as we pleased. We further agreed to discuss all matters of
importance by letter.... But this time, I must speak to you. Something
terrible has happened to-day, and we must talk about it and see how to
save ourselves from disaster.... A man called on me and was with me for
two hours in the studio.... Now, tell me, is it true that you possess a
mass of important papers written by the late President, and is it true
that you possess a most valuable pearl necklace? I know that Félix Faure
presented you with a comb and a brooch, but what of those pearls? And
what is the truth about the documents?"
I remained silent. My husband went on:
"The man, who talks French with a strong German accent, states that a
number of times he saw you leave the Elysée with bundles of papers in
your hands. On one occasion the President accompanied you to the
garden-door, and before closing it said to you: 'Be careful with the
documents.' As for the necklace, he has given me an exact description of
it, he has told me the number of the pearls, their size and weight....
He says he must and will have the documents and the necklace, but he
wants the necklace first. He knows its origin and history. If you keep
it, you and I and Marthe will be ruined, he says. All kinds of dangers
are threatening us. He knows the scandal in which Félix Faure was
unwittingly involved, and says you must know that the matter is of the
greatest gravity. If you give up the necklace, no harm will befall us,
and the horrible insinuations in the newspapers will at once cease.
Otherwise our position will become untenable.... He has said enough to
make me realise that he speaks the truth. The man is no impostor.
Indeed, the whole affair is so dreadful that if you don't hand me the
pearls, I give you my word of honour that I shall commit suicide!"
I was dumfounded. Still, I managed to say: "That German is a rogue. He
has discovered some facts about the friendship between the late
President and me, and he wants to blackmail us... and obtain the
necklace, the documents, which may be turned into money, and everything
we possess."
"No," my husband replied, "he is not anxious to blackmail us, if he can
obtain what he wants otherwise. As a matter of fact he is willing to buy
the pearls row by row, or even pearl by pearl. But he demanded that the
necklace shall never be shown or mentioned. He does not want it to be
recognised, and therefore will buy at once a number of the pearls and
the clasp. But the necklace must be unstrung."
"It is all very strange," I said. "The whole affair sounds like
blackmail and at the same time the man seems anxious to shield some
one...."
"Yes, it is strange.... But if you don't yield to him to-morrow, and
hand him at least some of the pearls and swear that he shall have the
others, in time, he will do his worst, and I know enough to realise what
the worst would be.... Now, what do you decide?"
I did not hesitate very long. I remembered the President's fear when he
besought me to keep the necklace. Also I had had but little peace since
those fatal pearls were in my possession....
"I will talk to the man myself, and hand him some of the pearls...."
[Illustration: MY HUSBAND, M. STEINHEIL, IN 1898]
"You will not see him. He came this morning only because he knew you
were ill in bed; otherwise he would have made some appointment with
me.... He will be here to-morrow. What shall I tell him?"
I fetched the necklace, unstrung the pearls--selected ten amongst the
largest--and handed my husband the others.
"Do as you please with these," I said. "And tell that German that I
shall keep these ten pearls.... Some day I may want the money that they
will fetch."
The next day I heard that the man "allowed" me to keep the ten pearls,
but first my husband had to swear in my name that if I ever decided to
sell them, it should be to him, the German. One out of the five rows of
pearls was "sold" to that mysterious individual, and the veiled libels
in the newspapers ceased as if by enchantment!
Was it mere coincidence, or had the man really some power? Or had that
scandalous press campaign been more or less directly his own work? Had
he used it to intimidate me?
At any rate, the enigmatical German kept his promises. My husband, who
had an abject fear of him, kept the pearls in his studio, and the
German, who came every three or four months, insisted on seeing the
pearls and then bought a few of them. He always managed to call when I
was not at home, but once or twice I saw him leave the villa in the
Impasse just as I entered it. He was small and dark, and had a very
Jewish nose. It was winter when I saw him, and the collar of his
overcoat was turned up to his ears. It was quite evident that he did not
wish his face to be seen.
My husband corresponded secretly with the man, and sold, through the
latter's agency, a number of pictures to various persons in Germany. The
whole matter was so strange that I repeatedly attempted to drag from my
husband all that he knew. I had an impression that he was aware of the
origin of the necklace, and that there were some clauses in his compact
with the man of which he had not acquainted me. But whenever I mentioned
the German he at once ran away and shut himself up in his studio.
Two or three years after the death of Félix Faure I looked into the
drawer in which the pearls were kept and found they had all gone,
except, of course, the ten which I had put aside.
A few days later my husband said to me: "The 'German' has been again.
His attitude has changed for the worse. He now demands the ten large
pearls you have kept, and also the papers of President Faure."
I refused point blank. The pearls I kept in reserve, for some unforeseen
emergency. As for the documents, I would sooner have burned them, in
spite of their importance and of the memories attached to them, than
hand them to that German who might have used them for Heaven knew what
dangerous purpose.
"What did he say when you gave him my reply?" I asked my husband after
the man had called.
"He said he could afford to wait... but he would gain his ends, 'in
time.'"
A few weeks later, having finished some work I had been doing on a
historical costume which my husband needed for a painting, representing
a sixteenth-century nobleman reading by a window--the picture was
intended for the salon--I went up to the studio. An old Italian model, a
man called Giganti, was there.
"Monsieur went out for a while, and told me to wait for him, Madame....
He seemed rather upset...."
"What about?"
"Oh! He said he had lost a 'political paper.'..."
It then occurred to me that during the past few days my husband had been
somewhat strange and embarrassed in his manner. We had a conversation
about the "political paper," and he finally admitted that he "had
mislaid a letter of President Faure...."
"I can guess what has happened," I said. "That man came again and
demanded from you a proof that the documents were still in our
possession. You had to show them to him, and one dropped... which the
man promptly seized, no doubt, and as the letters are numbered you
discovered when examining them that one had disappeared. Those papers
are not safe in your studio. Give them back to me."
He readily consented, and I hid it in the "secret" drawer of my
writing-table, after having carefully looked through the documents and
found that none was missing, except the "mislaid" letter, which was,
however, written in a cypher known only to the President and myself.
During the years that followed, the mysterious foreigner continued to
call, and, as the reader will learn, did so until a few weeks before the
murder of my husband and my mother in 1908. I am inclined to believe
that the necklace was a crown jewel which, by a series of strange
events, came into the possession of President Faure. That the "German"
should have spent so much time in exacting the pearls seems strange, but
it has occurred to me that the man was playing a double game,
blackmailing not only us--I doubt if M. Steinheil was ever paid for the
pearls--but also the personage who was so anxious to recover them. By
giving them up a few at a time, he naturally kept that personage longer
in his power.
As for the way in which the necklace came into the President's
possession, I take it that some foreign... Prince, with whom perhaps,
for political reasons, he ought not to have been on intimate terms, had
very probably lost heavily to him at a secret gambling party. Félix
Faure was paid with the necklace instead of in cash, owing to the
temporary financial embarrassment of his illustrious friend. The latter
then, to his horror, found out the origin of the necklace and that it
had been stolen--for it seemed to me that there had probably been a
robbery. If the truth had leaked out, both the President and his friend
would have been involved in a scandal of such far-reaching political
consequences that perhaps a war might have resulted. In their
consternation, they agreed to deny all knowledge of the necklace, hence
the agitation of the President, who had already given me the pearls and
who two days later begged me to hide them and on no account to wear
them.
The "foreigner" was probably a professional blackmailer, and when he
found that nothing more was to be done with the pearls and that his
livelihood from that source was gone, sought to turn to his advantage
the knowledge which he had gained from my husband (always too ready to
give his confidence to any one who posed as his friend) of Félix Faure's
documents.
I earnestly hope that some day the mystery will be solved. My theory may
then be found wanting in certain particulars, but I believe that, on the
whole, it will seem, to the reader, the most plausible.