A remarkable correspondence led up to the opening act of the drama. She sent Roques a letter, in which she said, "I am beset with sad and depressing thoughts. What I am about to do is very ugly."
Later she wrote, "I prefer Fowler's solution to begin with. It is agreed, Felix. You shall be obeyed. Have I ever hesitated before anything except the desertion of my children? Crimes against the law don't trouble me at all. It is only crimes against Nature that revolt me. I am a worshipper of Nature."
Another remarkable reference to the forthcoming attempt on her husband's life must be quoted, "I have been playing the Danse Macabre as a duet. My nerves must be affected, for it produced a gloomy effect upon me. I thought of death and of those who are about to die. Can it be that this feeling will return to me? But it is so sweet to think that I am working for our nest."
The last letter she penned before the actual poisoning began was an outburst of love and hysteria.
"Oh, Felix, love me, for the hideousness of my task glares at me. I want to close my heart and my soul and my eyes. I want to banish the recollection of what he has done for me, for I worship you. I feel such a currency of complete intimacy between you and me that words seem unnecessary. We read each other's thoughts as in an open book. To arrest this current would be to arrest my life. I may shudder at what I am doing after it is done, but go back I cannot. Comfort and sustain me; help me to get over the inevitable moments of depression, bind me under your yoke. Make me drunk with your caresses, for therein lies your own power. I will be yours, whatever happens. So long as you give me your orders I will carry them out. But it seems to me I am doing wrong. I love you terribly."
Weiss became ill in October, 1890, mysteriously ill, for the local doctor was greatly puzzled. The patient's young wife—she was only twenty-two—nursed him with apparent devotion. She would allow no one else to give him his food, and, of course, her reason for this was the fact that no one else could be relied upon to mix arsenic with it!
When friends of the family called Jeanne's distress touched their hearts. She was implored not to risk a breakdown herself by overdoing the day and night nursing of her ailing husband, and they advised her to employ professional help. With a wan smile Jeanne announced her determination to nurse him tenderly herself, and sacrifice her own life if necessary for him. There had been adverse rumours concerning Jeanne Weiss in Oran and the neighbourhood, but in the face of this unexampled devotion to her husband they seemed to be the inventions of unscrupulous enemies.
The doctor grew more puzzled. Just when his patient seemed to be improving he would have a relapse, and there was a curious ill-luck about the ministrations of Madame Weiss. He did not see that Jeanne was only acting the part of the distressed and anxious wife. It was her pale face and tearful manner that kept his eyes closed to the truth.
It happened, however, that Weiss had a secretary, Guerry, whose wife was a friend of Mademoiselle Castaing, the postmistress at Ain-Fezza, a lady whose bump of curiosity was abnormally developed, for she was in the habit of passing her time by opening the letters that came through her office, and reading the contents.
Mademoiselle, in fact, knew more about the intrigue between Madame Weiss and Felix Roques than anyone else, and it was only by exercising the rarest self-control that she refrained from publishing far and wide the news that Roques had gone to Spain to be out of the way when Weiss died, and that Madame Weiss was to join him later in Madrid with her children. She knew also that months before Jeanne had refused to elope with Roques, because that would have meant parting from her children, the custody of whom would be given to her deserted husband by the Court. It was because she wished to keep her children that she decided to murder her husband instead of simply leaving him.