During the very first hour of the first Instruction he abruptly turned to me and exclaimed fiercely: "Your veil is down; why is your veil down?... It is down because you want to hide your face, it is down because you are guilty!... Raise that veil at once, raise it, I say!..."
Another time, he rose, bent forward towards me, and shouted: "You are the assassin!"... I rose in my turn, and, completely losing control of myself, I cried back: "It is you who are the assassin! You are murdering my daughter and me!"
He was furious. "I'll have you arrested!" he shouted.
"I'm arrested already," was my obvious reply. He made a violent gesture, went into the next room, and banged the door.
M. André invariably sought refuge in the next room, whenever I had the better of him.
He smoked cigarette after cigarette during my Instruction, and blew the smoke in my direction. It was so obvious an impertinence, and he showed such satisfaction at my impatience, that one day I did not reply to his question.
"Why don't you answer?" he exclaimed triumphantly. "Is it that you realise that it is no longer any use struggling against all the evidence that reveals your guilt?"
I merely replied: "I cannot speak on account of the smoke, Monsieur."
M. André continued smoking, but henceforth blew the smoke in a different direction.
"It is really amazing..." he said to me one day. "Can't you see that, if you were not guilty, you would ask your whole family, your friends, to visit you at Saint-Lazare! You are ashamed, because you are a criminal!"