M. Simon, the greffier, had ceased writing, Maître Aubin was smiling. I could hear the two guards chuckle, and M. André, utterly routed, left the Cabinet, and for a long while we heard him walking up and down in the next room.
Each Instruction lasted from noon until seven or eight in the evening. I was then taken back to the Dépôt, where I waited one hour and often much longer before being escorted to Saint-Lazare by two or three inspectors. It was sometimes ten or eleven, when, thoroughly exhausted, and having had no food for twelve hours or so, I entered my cell where Firmin and Jacq were waiting for me. Firmin never went to bed until I was back.
Sister Léonide, too, awaited me.... After the third or fourth Instruction, she was so alarmed at my appearance that she thenceforth always had some kind of surprise in store for me when I returned from the Palace of Justice. On one occasion she gave me a little plate, an ordinary, coarse, penny white plate, but what a luxury!... Then she presented me with three parcels wrapped in tissue paper, and in them I found a little salt, a small piece of butter, and... three hot potatoes in their jackets. It seemed to me that I was hungry, that I must be hungry, after those Instructions, but somehow I could not eat. On that occasion, however, I was overjoyed to see food on a plate, and Sister Léonide fed me with a spoon, as one feeds a child. After that she brought me three baked potatoes every evening.
She asked me one day how it was that I was so fond of them, and I told her that it was my father's favourite dish. Potatoes "in their jackets" are called in French pommes de terre "en robe de chambre" (in their dressing-gowns), but my father said, far more prettily: "en robe des champs," which sounds alike, but means in their country clothes, in nature's garb.
In spite of Sister Léonide's care, of my daughter's solicitude, and of the devotion of my three counsel, that Instruction was using up the little vitality and strength I still possessed. It was dreadful to have to reply to all kinds of insidious and perfidious questions, for seven or eight hours at a time, especially as the questioner never once ceased to make it perfectly obvious that he considered me a murderess, a murderess without even an accomplice... until the very end, when, after reading the various experts' reports, he admitted that I had probably been assisted.
M. André was convinced that I was guilty, but in view of the long report which he would have to draw up at the end of the Instruction, and which would go to the Chambre des Mises en Accusations, he had to accumulate at least as many proofs as possible of my guilt, and as there were none, his task was arduous! And it was the very difficulty of his task which made him so aggressive, threatening, and palpably unjust.
There was not a method, there was not a trick, that he did not think permissible. In order to put me off my guard, as it were, he would jump from one question to another, question me, for instance, about a detail of my life at Bellevue, then abruptly ask me the exact figures of the various sums of money that I said were to be found in the drawer of the desk of my boudoir, on the night of the crime. After bewildering me with questions about the exact origin of such amounts (six months after the money had been stolen) he would ask me a list of the contents of our medicine-chest at the time of the murder!
At every Instruction he dealt with everything—at once....
And when I hesitated, faltered, made a slight mistake or did not exactly repeat the answers I had made on other occasions to the same questions, he jumped up with glee: "I've got you!"...
Another of the examining magistrate's favourite methods was to ask me a question of such a length that when written down, it covered quite two large pages.... And woe betide me if I missed a single one of the numberless points included in that one question! When, on a few occasions, I ventured to ask that some portion of the endless question be repeated to me, I was told, in a melodramatic tone, that I wanted time to reflect, and that I should not need to reflect if I were innocent, that the truth never hesitated, but burst forth at once.