Maître Aubin checked his hilarity, and in an earnest tone added: "Ah, Madame, I almost hope the non-lieu (no bill) you expect will not be granted you. I know it sounds terrible ... as it would mean, for you, several weeks more in this prison. But, believe me, a non-lieu in your case would amount to the total wreck of your life and of Marthe's too. If you were suddenly set free, the public would think that there was some pact between you and the authorities. Suspicions would become deeper and more general than ever. Your life would be made a misery, whilst at a trial, people would follow the examination and the evidence, and after your acquittal, which would be the inevitable conclusion of the trial if there were one, you would be fully rehabilitated in the eyes of the whole world."
Maître Aubin was sincere. I know he was not thinking—and if he had, it would have been excusable—of the great speech he would make at the trial, of the fame and glory his rôle in the final act of the sensational drama could give him. He merely thought of what was best for me.... Alas, in spite of my acquittal, many people continued to believe me guilty, and less than a month after I reached England, I heard a number of people discuss the Steinheil affair and my personality in a drawing-room, and most of them agreed that I was a dangerous and fatal woman, and "very likely, a murderess." No one knew who I was; I had been invited to that soirée by an acquaintance who advised me to retain my incognito, and who introduced me under another name. I took part in the discussion about Mme. Steinheil. Men and women surrounded me because I "seemed to have studied the case more thoroughly than they had," as one lady put it, and I went so far as to tell them that I had met Mme. Steinheil and had found her a typical Parisienne, perhaps a little "weak" as a woman, but kind-hearted, artistically inclined, a devoted mother, and altogether a person absolutely incapable of a cowardly or a base action—still less, of course, of a crime.
"You may have met her, Madame," said an old gentleman, "but you don't know her! Certain women, especially in your country, which is also the country of the wretched murderess of whom we are speaking, are inclined to be 'weak,' as you put it. But such weaknesses are pardonable in certain circumstances, whilst murdering one's own mother and husband is unspeakably monstrous."
"Of course it is," I said; "but how do you know she did murder her husband and her mother?"
"Why! The French newspapers said so. Besides, had she been innocent, they would not have tried her for her life!"
"But she was acquitted...."
"Yes, yes... quite so!... All the same, beware of this person, Madame, should you meet her again...."
Since then, I have often been in that drawing-room; the host, the hostess, and all their friends know now who I am, and I believe that although I am not a "fatal" woman, they would give their own life for me. To win them to me, I had merely to be—myself. They knew me, and yet I have only told them a very small part of my life-story. I hope and believe that all those who once condemned me without hesitation, and thought that I was guilty, just because "the French newspapers said so," will, after reading this painful account of my life and my "case," learn at last to forget the "Tragic," or "Red Widow," and to know, and, I trust, sympathise with, a woman who suffered unjustly the worst of martyrdoms.
Firmin left Saint-Lazare a short time after my last Instruction.
When she heard the great, the wonderful news, Firmin exclaimed: "Oh! Madame.... And I hoped so much you would be free long before me!" She was sorry, intensely sorry; not to leave the prison, of course, but to part from me. She packed her few belongings silently, then, when the moment of saying good-bye had come, Firmin came to me and said: "Madame, say you will grant me something... something I want to ask you and yet don't like to ask."