The two guards took me along a passage. We passed before a row of cages, inside which were men with horrid faces. They shouted at me through the bars, and the guards told me to hasten.... I learned afterwards that the official name of this passage lined with cages is "La Souricière"—the "mouse-trap."
We reached another building. The authorities were so afraid of enterprising journalists that guards had been posted at every door, a precaution, however, which did not prevent a photographer—on the Matin staff, of course—who had climbed up to a carved-stone ledge above a door at the top of a staircase, from taking a snapshot of me as I walked up the steps between the guards!... I confess, however, that I was so frightened for the man's safety in his perilous position, that I forgot to be angry.
I entered a room where I found my three counsel. After a few words of encouragement, Maître Aubin took me to Judge André's Cabinet.
I felt miserable, ashamed, and indignant.
I saw M. André. He wore a frock-coat and a black tie. He seemed a man of about fifty, was very stout, with a red, congested face, and a greyish beard. His hair was dark and spare. His eyes seemed to jump about behind the pince-nez, and they seldom looked straight at any one.
"Sit down!" he ordered. His voice was even more vulgar and aggressive than his appearance.
He sat at a long table, with my counsel behind him; opposite him sat his clerk, M. Simon, who wrote down the main questions and answers. I sat at one end of the table, with the two municipal guards behind me, and opposite, at the other end of the table, was the window, so that the light struck me straight in the face.
M. Simon, the greffier, was middle-aged, slim, and had a shrewd, pleasant face. He was calm, methodical, and kind. How many times, during that bewildering and painful Instruction, did he give me a glance of sympathy! How many times did he stealthily wipe away a tear!... How often, when I made a triumphant reply, did he half-mischievously wink at me, like a gamin de Paris, as if to say: "You got home all right that time."
Behind me the guards sometimes whispered, after some fierce battle of words between M. André and me: "Well done!"... and in their own simple, spontaneous way, they added:... "little woman!"
That "Well done, little woman" of the guards, and the winks of encouragement from the clerk, more than once gave me renewed strength at moments when, worn by my ceaseless efforts, I was about to give up the awful struggle, not in despair, but through sheer physical and mental exhaustion.