I discovered many remarkable things in the dossier. I discovered, for instance, that ninety-nine per cent. of the persons whom I knew intimately, receiving them again and again at my house, and seeing them or communicating with them as often as two or three times a week—and this until a few days before the crime—had declared in their evidence that they hardly knew me at all!
One gentleman, a bright and thoroughly useless nonentity, who had known me for several years, and whom for the sake of his charming young wife, I had greatly helped in his career, stated that he had only met me once or twice... forgetting that I had possessed, and still possess, a few scores of his letters in which he beseeched me to help him out of his difficulties, and to intercede in his favour with this or that Minister of State! An aged lady, who ruled over a political Salon—whose chief aim in life was nothing more nor less than the overthrow of the Republic, and who invited me, though I never accepted, to secret meetings where political plots were hatched, and who, manifesting the greatest affection for me and my daughter, came constantly to my house—after declaring in her evidence that in February 1908, she "was present at a dinner given by Mme. Steinheil, where she met M. Dujardin-Beaumetz (Under-Secretary for Fine-Arts), Count and Countess d'Arlon, the wife of an ex-Minister... altogether some fifteen guests of incontestable morality." She went on to say that she had visited me, at the d'Arlons, after the crime, when I told her what had happened on the fatal night.... "She looked very upset and a prey to a kind of hallucination, which made her jump from one topic of conversation to another. To sum up, I had for the first time, the impression that Mme. Steinheil had not been quite sincere with me, that she had wanted to use to her advantage the position I hold in Society, and I mentally decided to have nothing more to do with her!"
But perhaps the most "curious" document in the dossier was the evidence given by the wife of a well-known banker, who stated: "At a reception, three years ago (1906)... I heard Mme. Steinheil. I congratulated her, in the usual terms.... I visited her husband's exhibition of paintings. Mme. Steinheil then came to one of my receptions and promised to sing at one of my "musicals." A few days later I invited her; she came with her husband, sang, and was applauded. As I could not consider her as a professional singer, I went to the Impasse Ronsin and bought one of her husband's paintings.... I only saw Mme. Japy once, that was at the only 'at home' which I attended at the Steinheils'. This sums up the relations my husband and I had with the Steinheils, except a mere visit of condolence we paid to her, at Bellevue, after the crime."
(Dossier Cote 3138)
The true facts about those relations are these: this lady during the three years of our acquaintance came to most of my receptions, and stayed frequently from three o'clock till past eight. She used my salon as a means of making and cultivating acquaintances who might be useful to herself and her husband. People prominent in politics, art, or society did not attend her receptions, and she frequently sought my help in her desire to alter this. She brought all her friends to my house, called on me with her husband, not only in Paris but at Bellevue, where she came not just once, for a "mere visit of condolence," but a dozen or fifteen times without being invited, and week after week she sent me charming letters, all beginning with the words, "My darling Nell,"—a name she had given me for some reason unknown to me—not every day, but almost!
As for the close friends who coolly declared they had never met me at all, their names would make a long list!... I have forgiven them all. Friends in need are rare indeed; and was a woman ever in greater need—of sympathy—than I was during those terrible months that followed the crime! Well, I would rather that "devoted" friends ignored me than slandered me, as so many did, alas....
As a matter of fact, the only people who did have a kind or just word to say about me were not Society people, or wealthy or "prominent" personages, but old servants whom I had nursed when they were ill, and poor artists—men and women—who were not ashamed to say that I had helped them.
The dossier, indeed, proved a mine of psychological information. It revealed in their true light the character of scores of people whom I had trusted, helped, and liked, and it showed up vividly a side of Parisian Society which it is perhaps best to ignore.
I experienced another surprise when I found that several persons whom I had never met, and had never heard of, gave evidence about me—most damaging evidence, of course.
The most "dramatic" discovery I made in the dossier was that of Comte de Balincourt's career. The following document, especially, gave me one of the greatest shocks I ever experienced: