Thus ended this pretty romance, so tender and so pure, but one which, like every page of the book of my life, like every one of my actions and words, was to be interpreted in an unfavourable way, during my examination and at my trial. My past was searched, pried into, ransacked and misconstrued, and even this naïve and delightful romance, with my first emotions and my first dreams, was not spared, and failed to find grace in the sight of my tormentors. As my counsel declared in court: "They tried to find out, not only whether there had been intimate relations between Mlle. Japy and Lieut. Sheffer, but even whether, such relations being proved, a child was not born, who, having years later become an Apache, committed the double murder of the Impasse Ronsin, and spared his own mother!"
Nothing, however, it need hardly be said, was found against M. Sheffer or myself... except one thing! It appeared that I had once spent six days in Bâle, and this was at once construed into an elopement with M. Sheffer. But exhaustive investigations established the fact that the lieutenant was away at the time attending manœuvres, and it was finally discovered that the elopement to Bâle was nothing more serious than the visit of my mother and myself to the dentist, there being none in Beaucourt!
It was at the Paris Court of Assize, in November 1909, more than twenty years after the end of my short-lived engagement, that I met once more the man who had been the hero of my first love-dream. I was sitting in the dock, on the "bench of infamy," as barristers call it, accused of having murdered my mother and my husband, and Major Sheffer came to the witness's "bar" in the well of the court and told our innocent little romance of long ago.
My dream was broken. Life did not seem worth living.... But youth soon forgets. "We are not even capable of being unhappy a long time," Pascal said.
I spent two months in Bayonne and Biarritz, wrote every week to my parents, and received nearly every day long and delightful letters from my father.
Then, suddenly, I heard that my father had died. While drinking a glass of icy water he had fallen stone dead... of heart failure. It was on November 14th, 1888. I was nineteen years old. I thought I should lose my reason. They put me in the train and I reached Beaucourt, too late, alas, to see once more the beloved face of my father. He had already been laid in his coffin.
My father had been loved by all, and the Beaucourt temple was crowded at his funeral. All the musical societies of the neighbourhood came to pay him a last honour, and, massed together, they played Chopin's funeral march.... My poor mother was so prostrated with grief that she was unable to attend the funeral.... I will not say any more about a day which was one of the most painful in my life.... Besides, I was so numb with grief that my memory of it is blurred.
During the days that followed, everything at home was thrown into such confusion, and the sight of all that my father had touched or loved was so distressing to me, that I begged my mother to let me leave Beaucourt for a while.... She raised her tear-stained face and said pitifully: "And I?" I felt ashamed of my selfishness, and we fell into each other's arms... and, of course, I thought no more of going away....
Mimi, my younger sister, was ill, and I should have fallen ill too, had I not had to nurse her and my mother. When they recovered, I spent whole days in the woods and by the lakes in our estate, in all those hallowed spots where my father and I spent so many unforgettable hours together.
For a year I was unable to take my violin from its case, or to open the piano. Everything was changed, and I felt like a lost soul.