The Amazing City

by John Frederick Macdonald

“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.

Poor, poor Mr Burlingham! It will be remembered that Madame Steinheil described the assassins of her husband and mother as three men in black robes, and a red-headed woman. Well, just because Mr Burlingham had hired a black robe from a costumier’s for a fancy-dress ball a few nights before the murder, he was suspected, shadowed and worried by the detective police. One day the police stationed Madame Steinheil outside his door, and when he sauntered out and walked off, the “Tragic Widow” exclaimed: “Yes, that is one of the assassins. I recognise him by his red beard.” But as on the night of the murder Mr Burlingham was far away in Switzerland with two friends on a walking-tour, he had no difficulty in establishing a decisive alibi. Nevertheless, Mr Burlingham became notorious. His photographs appeared in the newspapers. He was followed here, there and everywhere by Yellow Reporters: who described him as the “enigmatic Burlingham,” and the “sinister Burlingham”—and yet Mr Burlingham, with his light red beard, gentle green eyes, low voice and kindly expression is, in reality, the simplest and mildest-looking mortal that ever breathed. What humiliations, what indignities, nevertheless, had Mr Burlingham to endure! His landlord gave him notice, his tradespeople ceased calling for orders; when out walking in the neighbourhood he inhabited, concierges exclaimed: “There goes the famous Burlingham,” while little boys cried: “Here comes the sinister Burlingham.” Once, after calling on a friend who was out, he left his name with the concierge—and the concierge, panic-stricken, fled her lodge, and, rushing into the next house, breathlessly told her neighbour that she had seen the “terrible Burlingham.” In fact, an intolerable time of it for mild, simple Mr Burlingham.

“I have narrowly escaped the guillotine,” were his first words to the judge; and the Court laughed. The American should have engaged an interpreter: his French and his accent were deplorable. “This Steinheil affair is not clear,” he continued, naïvely, and everyone shook with delight. “I am very sorry you have been so badly treated,” said M. de Valles, “but you fell under suspicion because you had eccentric habits, and mixed with eccentric people.” M. de Valles’ idea of “eccentric” habits and “eccentric” people was in itself eccentric. For Mr Burlingham’s friends and associates during his sojourn in Paris have been painters, sculptors, and journalists of talent and honourable standing. As for his habits, they have been those of a firm believer in the “simple life.” Sandals for Mr Burlingham; no hat; terrific walking-tours. Then a diet of rice, grapes and nuts. (In the buffet of the Law Courts Mr Burlingham, when invited to take a “drink,” ordered grapes: he consumed I don’t know how many bunches a day, to the stupefaction of the waiters and customers.) Well, after having received apologies from the judge, Mr Burlingham received those of counsel for the defence and the prosecution. “Excuses are scarcely enough,” replied the witness; “I should like to say something about the French judicial system.” At which, M. de Valles, rapping his paper-cutter, sternly requested simple, unfortunate Mr Burlingham to “retire.”

Murmurs, exclamations, excitement in court when M. Marcel Hutin, of the Echo de Paris, and MM. Labruyère and Barby, of the Matin—the three journalists who bullied and “tortured” Madame Steinheil in the Impasse Ronsin Villa on the night previous to her arrest—strode up to the short wooden bar that takes the place, in France, of a witness-box.