Part 12

A peal of mocking laughter betrays the presence of the Blackbird. So it is not the imperious “Cocorico” who summons the sun! So the day breaks without Chantecler’s shrill crow! At first the Cock refuses to admit it: “That is the sun I summoned yesterday.” But when his illusions are gone he returns, humbled but not despairing, to the farm-yard. If he has not the supreme power to create the day, at least he can herald it.

When Chantecler has vanished, the Hen Pheasant, out of love for the Cock, deliberately flies into a trap set by the owner of the poultry yard. She remembers Chantecler having described the farmer as an admirable man:

Car le propriétaire est un végétarien. C’est un homme étonnant. Il adore les bêtes. Il leur donne des noms qu’il prend dans les poètes.

So the farmer, after releasing the Hen Pheasant from the trap, will restore her to Chantecler.

More and more golden becomes the forest. A strident “Cocorico” from the distance announces Chantecler’s return to the yard. When footsteps are heard, the birds stop singing. And the curtain falls.

It falls on a _chef-d’œuvre_.

X

AFTER _CHANTECLER_

More than a fortnight has passed since I witnessed the dress rehearsal of _Chantecler_: and what an odd, what an exhausting fortnight it has been! First of all dreams—or rather nightmares. Strangely, preposterously, I am majestic, cock-crowing “Chantecler” himself. A few minutes later, with wild, delirious rapidity, I turn into the Blackbird. M. Rostand’s Blackbird can hop in and out of his cage, and mingle with the hens, the ducks, the fluffy little chicks, and the other feathered creatures in the farm-yard; but I—am a prisoner in my cage—no one heeds my cries, no one releases me, and to add to my panic huge owls with shining eyes gather around my cage and hoot lugubriously at me.

Nor is this all. I get hopelessly entangled in the gigantic cobweb, which is one of the most wonderful scenic effects of the Fourth Act (the “Hen Pheasant’s Forest”) of _Chantecler_. Also I stumble over the great toadstools, fall heavily to the ground; and the gorgeous Hen Pheasant herself appearing, I feel humiliated and ashamed that so elegant and beautiful a creature should find me sprawling thus awkwardly on the turf. “What a nuisance these toadstools are,” I observe. “What are you doing in my forest? Leave it immediately,” commands the Hen Pheasant. But I have sprained my ankle; impossible to rise, even to move. And I burst into tears, and I implore the beautiful Pheasant to pardon me, and then a great bat gets caught in my hair, and——

Enough. Although my sufferings in these nightmares have been acute, I have one thing to be thankful for. Up to now I have not been attacked, as “Chantecler” is in the Third Act, by a fierce, bloodthirsty Prize Fighting Cock.

Gracious goodness, this _Chantecler_! Rising unrefreshed from my troubled, restless sleep, I find, on the breakfast-table, letters from London, Birmingham, Manchester, which show that M. Edmond Rostand’s masterpiece has interested those cities as much as it has agitated and excited Paris.

“MY DEAR BOY” (writes a frail, silver-haired and very charming old lady who gave me half-crowns in my schooldays),—“I live very much out of the world, as old people should do; but I confess to my curiosity having been aroused by a very peculiar play now being acted in Paris. I mean _Chantecler_, by a M. Edmond Rostand. It seems that the characters in it—if one can call them characters?—are animals. How very remarkable! I wonder how it can be done! Such things are seen, of course, in pantomimes (do you remember my taking you to Drury Lane Theatre many, many years ago to see _Puss-in-Boots_?). But the newspapers here say that this play is wonderfully natural, and full of true poetry and feeling. When you can spare half-an-hour, pray satisfy an old lady’s curiosity by giving her an account of the piece.”

Then, with innumerable dashes, exclamation marks, and words underlined, the following appeal from fascinating, lovely, irresistible Miss Ethel Tempest:—

“Of course, lucky man, you have seen _Chantecler_, and if you don’t tell me all about it by return of post I shall never write to you, and never look at you, and never speak to you again. I don’t want to know anything about the plot of the play, as I have read all about that in the papers. You have got to be a dear, and tell me about the hat that Madame Simone wears as the Hen Pheasant. It’s made of straw and feathers, and it’s going to be the rage in London. Sybil Osborne tells me chic Parisiennes are wearing it already. No; on second thoughts, send me all the fashionable illustrated papers that give sketches of the hat. As you’re a man, you won’t understand it. Mind, _all_ the papers: you can’t send enough. If you could get a special sketch done by one of your artist friends in the Latin Quarter, it would be lovely.”

Well, of course I write to the gentle, kindly silver-haired lady who once took me to a Drury Lane pantomime; and of course, too, I send illustrated papers—thirteen of them—to exquisite Miss Tempest, and ask Raoul Fauchois, a gay, sympathetic art student, to “do” me a sketch of the Hen Pheasant’s straw hat. He consents, and I fancy he will keep his promise. “Naturally, the sketch is not for you,” he says, at once wisely and poetically. “It is for one of those blonde English misses whose _chevelure_, so radiant, so golden, lights up the sombre streets of old London. You may rely upon me, _mon pauvre ami_. I understand; I know exactly how you feel—for I myself have had affairs of the heart.”

Again, always from London and the provinces, requests for picture post cards of the principal scenes in _Chantecler_; for gilt brooches (3 f. 50 c. in the tawdry shops of the rue de Rivoli) representing “Chantecler” crowing and crowing with his chest thrown outwards and his beak raised heavenwards; for the Porte St-Martin theatre programme of _Chantecler_; and for—“if you possibly can manage it”—the autograph of M. Edmond Rostand.

And then a telegram:

“Wife and self arrive Gare du Nord Wednesday 5.45. Please meet us. Not understanding French wish you accompany us see and interpret _Chantecler_.”

What worry, what exhaustion!

“Monsieur would be kind to explain this extraordinary ‘Chantecler’ to me. I am from the country, and have had much to do with poultry; but I have never seen a cock like Chantecler,” says my servant, a simple, naïve soul from Normandy.

Then my concierge, a practical lady: “But it’s ridiculous, but it’s mad! Cocks and hens cannot even speak, and yet this M. Rostand makes them recite poetry. What is France coming to? What will be the end of us all? Think, just think, what has been happening since the New Year. That sinister comet, the terrible floods, and now _Chantecler_.”

Very unwisely, I explain to my servant and to my concierge that M. Rostand’s glorious _chef-d’œuvre_ is symbolical.

_Chantecler_ is a symbolic play in verse.

The feathered creatures in the farm-yard represent human beings. “Chantecler” himself is the artist, the idealist. The Hen Pheasant is the coquettish, seductive, brilliant woman of the world. The Blackbird——

But here I stop, silenced by the startled expression of the concierge and the servant. It is plain they think I have become irresponsible, light-headed. “Monsieur is tired. Monsieur should lie down and rest. Monsieur is not quite himself,” says my servant.

“The comet—the floods—_Chantecler_, have been too much for Monsieur,” sighs the concierge.

XI

AU COURS D’ASSISES. PARIS AND MADAME STEINHEIL

It was not by reason of baccarat losses, duels, matrimonial disputes, nor because of the aches of indigestion nor of the indefinable miseries of neurasthenia, worries and ailments common enough in French Vanity Fair—it was not, I say, for any of these reasons that fashionable and financial Paris, sporting and theatrical Paris, certain worldly lights of literary and artistic Paris, and the extravagant, feverish _demi-monde_ of Paris, woke up on the morning of the 3rd November[5] in an exceedingly bad temper. Nor yet was their displeasure occasioned by the weather—London weather—all fog, damp and gloom. The fact was, at noon was to begin the first sitting of the great Steinheil trial, to which the above-mentioned ornaments of _le Tout Paris_ had been excitedly looking forward for many a month. All that time they had been worrying, agitating, intriguing to obtain the official yellow ticket that would entitle them to behold with their own eyes—O, dramatic, thrilling spectacle—the “Tragic Widow’s” entrance into the dock, and to hear with their own ears—O palpitating, overwhelming experience—the secret history of an essentially Parisian _cause célèbre_. The trial would be the event of the autumn season, a function no self-respecting _mondain_, _mondaine_ or _demi-mondaine_ could afford to miss. And so, as the accommodation in the Court of Assizes is limited, the campaign to secure cards of admission became ardent, fierce, and then (as the sensational day of the 3rd November approached) delirious. Off, by footmen, chauffeurs, special messengers, went scented little notes to judges and famous lawyers, and to deputies, senators and ministers, imploring those distinguished personages to “remember” the writer when the hour arrived for the precious yellow tickets to be distributed. “_Mon cher ami_,” wrote Madame la Comtesse de la Tour, “if you forget me I shall never, never forgive you.” Then, with a blot or two, and in a primitive, scrawling handwriting, Mademoiselle Giselle de Perle of the half-world: “_Mon vieux gros_, I count upon you for the trial. If you fail me, your little blonde Pauline will show her claws. And the claws of this blonde child can be terrible.” (It is shocking to think that blonde Giselle de Perle should be on such familiar terms with gentlemen in high places; but as a matter of fact she and her sisters play a very important rôle in the life of the Amazing City.) As for stout, diamond-covered Baronne Goldstein (wife of old bald-headed Goldstein of the Bourse), she invited judges and deputies to rich, elaborate dinners, at which the oldest, the mellowest, the most comforting wines from her cellars were produced; and when M. le Juge and M. le Député had been rendered genial and benevolent by those rare, warming vintages, she led them into a corner of Goldstein’s vast gilded _salon_, and there besought them, while breathing heavily under her breastplate of diamonds, to procure for her “just one little yellow ticket.” Naturally, all these State officials replied with a bow: “I will do my best. Need I say that it is my dearest desire to oblige you?” And our ornaments of _le Tout Paris_ were satisfied; already regarded that ticket of tickets as being safe and sound in their possession. When October dawned, Madame la Comtesse, lively Pauline Boum and stout Baronne Goldstein ordered striking dresses and huge, complicated hats for the Steinheil _cause célèbre_. In their respective _salons_, over their “five o’clock’s” of pale tea, sugared cakes, and crystal glasses of port, malaga and madeira, they excitedly described how they had driven to the tranquil, ivy-covered villa in the Impasse Ronsin where Madame Steinheil’s husband and mother had been assassinated on the night of the 30th-31st May eighteen months ago. And how, after that expedition, they had proceeded to beautiful Bellevue, seven miles out of Paris, to stare at that other villa, the “Vert Logis,” where the “Tragic Widow” received her lovers. How they gossiped, too, over the intrigue between the accused woman and the late President Félix Faure; and what fun they made of certain high State dignitaries who were said to be in a state of “panic” because they had been habitués of the Steinheil villas! “I would not miss the trial for the largest and finest diamond in the world,” declared these ladies. “It will be extraordinary, overwhelming, supreme,” exclaimed the male guests at these tea-and-madeira afternoon parties. “We shall still be discussing it this time next year.”

Suddenly, however, consternation, indignation, fury, hysteria, in _le Tout Paris_. In an official decree, M. de Valles, the judge appointed to preside over the Steinheil “debates,” intimated that all those scented notes had been written, all those elaborate dinners had been given, all those striking dresses and complicated hats had been ordered, and tried on I don’t know how many times—_in vain_. “I have,” stated M. de Valles, “received over 25,000 applications for tickets of admission, and every one of them I have refused. Only the diplomatic corps, the Bar, and a certain number of French and foreign journalists will be admitted. Let it be clearly understood that this decision of mine is irrevocable.” Gracious powers, the commotion! _Le Tout Paris_ protested, raged, until it wore itself out with anger and hysteria. “I have made thousands of enemies. Even my wife’s friends refuse to speak to me,” said M. de Valles to an interviewer. True to his word, the judge remained inexorable. Passionate letters to him remained unanswered; to all visitors he was invisible. Hence the exceedingly bad temper of _le Tout Paris_ on that foggy, gloomy morning of the 3rd of November. And thus for the first time on record the heroine of an essentially Parisian _cause célèbre_ entered the dock of the dim, oblong, oak-panelled Court of Assizes, secure from the laughter, the mockery, and the opera-glasses of French Vanity Fair.

An extraordinary woman, Madame Steinheil. Imagine Sarah Bernhardt in some supremely tragical rôle—pathetic, threatening; tender, violent; despairing, tearful; wrecked with indignation, suffering and exhaustion, and you will gain an idea of the “Tragic Widow’s” demeanour during the ten days’ dramatic trial. Her voice, like the incomparable Sarah’s, was now melodious and persuasive, then hoarse, bitter, frenzied; when she wept, it subsided into a moan or a broken whisper. Never even in Paris (where a widow’s weeds are perhaps excessively lugubrious) have I seen deeper mourning: heavy crape bands round the accused woman’s black dress, stiff crape bows in the widow’s cap, a deep crape border to the handkerchief which she clenched tightly, convulsively, in her black-gloved hand. Then, under her eyes, dark, dark shadows, which turned green as the trial tragically wore on. Her face, deadly pale, but for the hectic spot burning fiercely in each cheek. Her eyes, blue. Her hair, dark brown. Her ears, small and delicate; her mouth, sensitive, tremulous, eloquent. Her only _coquetterie_, the low, square-cut opening in the neck of her dress.

Wistfully, wretchedly, she glanced around the court, after M. de Valles, the presiding judge, had given her permission to sit down. Then her eyes fell upon a grim table placed immediately beneath the Bench: and she shuddered. It was grim because it contained the _pièces à conviction_—the alpenstock found near the late M. Steinheil’s body, the coil of rope with which he and his mother-in-law had been strangled, the famous bottle of brandy with the innumerable finger-prints, the wadding lying on the floor by the side of Madame Japy’s bed. Then, M. de Valles, in his rasping voice, asked the “Tragic Widow” the usual preliminary questions concerning her parentage, domicile and age. Almost inaudibly, Madame Steinheil replied. And the trial began.

Unfortunately, I have neither the space nor the time at my disposal to render even a tolerably satisfactory account of this overwhelming _cause célèbre_. “Impressions” are all I can offer, mixed up with brief descriptions of what the French journalist calls “incidents in court”; and even these “impressions” and “incidents” must necessarily be compressed and disconnected. For the slightness of my recital, I beg the indulgence of my readers.

“Messieurs les Jurés, I swear I am innocent. Messieurs les Jurés, I adored my mother. Messieurs les Jurés, do not believe the abominable things the President is saying about me,” was the “Tragic Widow’s” first passionate outburst. Then, turning round upon M. de Valles: “You are treating me atrociously.”

“I am treating you as you deserve,” was the reply.

For the first two days, M. de Valles assumed the office of public prosecutor, or rather of high inquisitor—and the “Tragic Widow” was on the rack. The judge in the black-and-red robes sneered, stormed, threatened, bullied; and turned constantly to the jury with a shrug of the shoulders as though to say: “She denies everything. She has never told anything but lies, and now she is lying again.” Over again and again he brutally accused Madame Steinheil of having assassinated her mother, but never did the accused woman fail to leap up from her chair with the cry: “I adored my mother. Messieurs les Jurés, I swear I adored her.” Another shrug of M. de Valles’ shoulders, and another cynical smile at the jury, when Madame Steinheil spoke of her devotion to her eighteen-year-old daughter. “I love her, and she loves me more fondly than ever—because she believes in my innocence. She has written me the tenderest letters and has visited me constantly in prison. She helped to make the black dress I am wearing.” And further gestures expressive of impatient incredulity on the part of M. de Valles when the “Tragic Widow” shrieked: “Yes; I have been a bad woman. Yes; I have been an immoral woman. Yes; I made false, wicked accusations against Remy Couillard and Alexandre Wolff. But I am not an assassin, a fiend. And only a fiend could murder her mother.” Here the shriek stopped. For some moments the “Tragic Widow” cried bitterly. Then, in Sarah Bernhardt’s melodious voice, she thus addressed the jury: “Gentlemen, I am deeply repentant for all the wrong I have done. Please realise that I was mad—that I was being tortured—when I made those false, atrocious accusations. I was being tortured by the examining magistrate and by the journalists who invaded my villa and refused to leave it until they had obtained sensational ‘copy’ for their papers. These journalists told me that nobody believed in my story, and that I had better tell a new one. They said my villa was surrounded by a hostile mob, come there to lynch me. It was they who suggested that I should accuse Alexandre Wolff and Remy Couillard. They tortured me until they made me say what they liked. It was no doubt splendid material for their papers: but the result was disastrous for me. Do you know, gentlemen of the jury, that it was actually in a motor car belonging to the _Matin_ that I was driven to the St Lazare prison?” And the “Tragic Widow” collapsed in her chair, covered her face with her hand, sobbed convulsively. At this point the two or three hundred barristers in court murmured compassionately: and M. de Valles called them to order by rapping his paper-cutter on his massive silver inkstand. (M. de Valles, by the way, was for ever rapping his paper-cutter, for ever wiping his brow with a huge handkerchief, for ever sinking back in his handsome, comfortable fauteuil, and then suddenly darting forward to hurl some savage remark at the accused.) Irritated by the compassionate demonstration of the barristers, unmoved by the shaking and sobbing of the black-dressed woman in the dock, M. de Valles pointed to the grim table containing the _pièces de conviction_, and cried: “Look at that horrible table, and confess; and shed real, not crocodile, tears. You have stated that on the night of the crime you were bound down and gagged by three men in black robes and by a red-headed woman, who entered your room with a dark lantern and then—after they had bound and gagged you, and after you yourself had lost consciousness—assassinated poor M. Steinheil and the unfortunate Madame Japy. Nobody believes you; your story is a tissue of falsehoods. It was you who, with the help of accomplices, murdered your husband and your mother.”

But let us not be too hard upon M. de Valles for his savage treatment of Madame Steinheil. He had considerately protected her from the cruel curiosity and impertinence of _le Tout Paris_; and then it was his legitimate rôle to attempt by continuous ruthless bullying to extract a confession from his pale-faced, exhausted martyr. For in France the word “judge,” as we understand it, is a misnomer. The French judge is the real public prosecutor, the chief cross-examiner; save for the jury, he would be all-powerful. But as the twelve men “good and true” are chosen from the justice-loving French people at large, M. le Juge’s drastic, brutal insinuations and accusations cannot alone bring about a condemnation. It is for the jury to decide. It remains with the jury to condemn. And at one o’clock in the morning of the 14th November the jurors in the Steinheil _cause célèbre_—workmen, mechanics, _petits commerçants_—demonstrated their inherent love and sense of justice by——

But I am anticipating events. Let us return to the crowded, stifling Court of Assizes; and then take a stroll in the marble corridors of the Paris Law Courts, where, throughout the Steinheil trial, wooden barriers barred the way to all those not provided with the precious yellow ticket; and where groups of policemen, and of Municipal and Republican Guards were discussing—like every other soul in Paris—this incomprehensible, amazing _cause célèbre_.

A change in M. de Valles on the third day of the trial. Respecting her tears, refraining from shrugging his shoulders at her repeated protestations of innocence, the judge treated the “Tragic Widow” as a human being; even with courtesy and compassion. This metamorphosis was due, I believe, to a hint received from high quarters, where (so I have since been assured) the strong protests of the Paris correspondents of the English and American newspapers against the French judicial system, had made an impression. But in the opinion of Henri Rochefort, Madame Steinheil’s savage assailant in the columns of the Nationalist _Patrie_, the “judge had been bought.” With his gaunt, yellow face, tumbled white hair, angry grey eyes, the ruthless old journalist and agitator was the most conspicuous figure in the press-box. To his colleagues and to the barristers around him, he also accused Madame Steinheil of having murdered the late Félix Faure. “She was in the pay of the Dreyfusards,” he said, in his hoarse voice, “and the Dreyfusards knew that so long as Faure lived there would be no revision. So they commissioned the woman Steinheil, his mistress, to assassinate him.” After which he sucked lozenges (fierce old Rochefort is always and always sucking lozenges in order to ease the hoarseness in his throat), and next proceeded to begin his article for the _Patrie_, in which he referred to Madame Steinheil as the “Black Panther”! I fancy, too, that it was Rochefort’s bold design to magnetise—even to mesmerise—the jury! At all events, when not writing or accusing, he kept his angry grey eyes fixed hard on the foreman. A good thing the “Tragic Widow” could not see him from her seat in the dock. Henri Rochefort’s gaunt yellow face, when lit up luridly with hatred and vindictiveness, is enough to make anyone falter and quail.

But as M. de Valles was calm, Madame Steinheil felt more at ease; and, apart from occasional tears and comparatively few outbursts, the “Tragic Widow” remained composed during the six long, stifling afternoons occupied by the evidence of the eighty-seven witnesses. Of these, of course, I can take only the most important. Let us begin with Mr Burlingham, an American painter and journalist, aged twenty-eight.