CHAPTER IX

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.

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...."

"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.