Need I say that after this new shock I passed such a night of anguish that my weary, harassed brain tottered one step further towards the brink of madness.
The next morning, quite early, M. Barby, of the Matin, called and said: "We are all indignant, Madame, at the way M. Sauerwein has treated you. I am ready to go with you to prove the absurdity of that accusation."
With Marthe and M. Barby I went to the Police Commissary. I told him what had happened, and he said: "This accusation against you is shameful...." He remembered the attempted burglary and the fact that M. Steinheil had requested him to have his house guarded by an inspector, but that his wife was to know nothing about it. The inspector had watched the house for about a fortnight, from outside, in the Impasse.
As a matter of fact, I had only heard of this attempted burglary by accident. A man came from the police to inform me that the house would no longer be watched. As I knew nothing more about the matter, I expressed surprise and asked a few questions, and it was then that I heard of the attempt. (Men had been seen climbing over the wall of our garden, by some compositors at the printing works at the end of the Impasse Ronsin, and an alarm being raised, the burglars hurriedly escaped.) I spoke to my husband on the matter, and asked why he had not warned me. Somewhat embarrassed, he replied: "I did not want to alarm you, and gave orders that you should not be told about it."
Meanwhile, newspapers published articles in which it was said that a former police inspector was suspected of being the author of the Impasse Ronsin murders, and that it was rumoured that he had been my lover!... The reader can imagine the sensation such "revelations" caused, and the amount of harm it did me, with the public! Anonymous letters reached me in greater numbers than ever, I was dragged in the mire, and when I left or entered the Impasse, there were loud cries of: "Death to her" or "Look at the murderess." It was enough to drive any one mad—and it did drive me mad.
I went to the Matin offices, and M. Sauerwein apologised. Then he and M. de Labruyère begged me to accompany them both, with some detectives in the pay of the journal, to some awful cut-throat place, at one in the morning, where they would show me the two men and the woman they had mentioned, so that I might state whether they looked like the persons I had seen on the fatal night.
I refused: "Since," I said, "those men have confessed their guilt, as you have said, and that Rossignol, the 'chief' murderer is in your hands, all you have to do is to inform the Law, and have them arrested. When they stand before M. Leydet, or before M. Hamard, I will come and identify them."
I heard no more of this sensational story, and the Matin turned to other clues and theories. "Confess," I was told one day, "confess that it is a political crime.... Don't think we are fools! If the Rossignol clue is worth nothing, then there are other clues!... Help us...."
I had not quite lost my reason yet, but I was blind enough not to realise that to the Matin, I was merely a useful, nay, a capital sensation-purveyor, a news-supplying machine that meant a valuable increase in the circulation of the paper. They only had one idea; to make as much as possible out of the "Steinheil Affair" and its wretched heroine, whether she had any news to give them or not!
True, most newspapers looked upon me in very much the same manner, but a great number of them were fair and human, and drew the line at certain "methods."