I had now been over eleven months in prison. November had come, with its dull skies and monotonous rains. My cell was dark again, and damper than ever. Juliette "read" the cards five, eight, ten times a day for me, and told me every time that my innocence would appear to all, and that I should be triumphantly acquitted.... It is wonderful what cards can say, or be made to say.
I knew the dossier by heart now in spite of its two million words. But the opening day of the trial, although every second brought me nearer to it, seemed to become more hopelessly distant. I sat on my rush chair by the open window and tried to take an interest in what I saw, although I knew it all so well. The drizzling rain drifted in through the wire trellis and the iron bars, and cooled my burning forehead. I pressed my hands flat against the trellis to cool them too, and sometimes, in a gust of frenzy at the thought of my imprisonment, I convulsively clutched both the bars and the trellis, and shook and shook them as if I thought I could shake them to pieces.
I heard that my trial was to begin at the Assize Court on Wednesday, November 3rd (1909), at noon.
Towards the end of October I had had a long talk with my daughter, and we had agreed that it would be better for me—and her—if she did not come again to Saint-Lazare. Her visits gave me life, but at the same time we could not help talking about the impending and momentous trial. Marthe wept bitterly, and the sight of her tears made me lose the courage and strength I so much needed to enable me to face the terrible ordeal.
"I will come at the end of your trial to see you acquitted, mother!" had been the last words of my beloved daughter.
I had long talks with my counsel. He urged me to be calm and discreet. Above all, he entreated me not to mention any "new" fact, and not to speak of President Faure or the judges I had known intimately; in short, he repeated what he had said to me before the Instruction.
I promised everything. I had the greatest confidence in my counsel, and he had sworn to me that I should be acquitted if only I did as he told me. I threatened, however, to break all my promises if there were women at my trial. I was thinking chiefly of one woman, the wife of a most prominent personage—at the time—the very woman who had visited President Faure shortly before my arrival at the Elysée on that fatal February 16th, 1899. I could not bear the idea that she might be in the court, smiling sarcastically at my misfortune and my shame—she free, powerful, perhaps even respected, and I a prisoner accused of murder!... Let not the reader think that there was or could be a question of jealousy between that woman and me. She hated me in those days when President Faure honoured me not only with his friendship but with his confidence, and she had hated me ever since. For my own part, I had not worried over her, but I had warned the President time after time against her, for it was she who had urged him to adopt that dangerous remedy from the abuse of which I have no doubt he died.... I thought of other women, too: "friends," who after seeing me for fifteen years in my salon now find it "amusing" to watch me in a Court of Assize.... Ah! Let not the reader speak of Spite, Jealousy, or Malice! I had but one thought: to be acquitted, to escape from that Inferno, and to be once more near my child. But I needed all my reason and all my strength for that trial, and I felt that if around me I saw women laugh at my misery, my grief would be greater, the trial more painful, victory more difficult to achieve!...
Did Maître Aubin take some steps or not? I cannot say, nor do I wish to know. But I was shown, shortly before the opening of the trial, a cutting from Le Temps, I believe, which stated that M. de Valles would not allow any ladies to be present at the Steinheil trial.
On Sunday, October 31, my counsel remained with me most of the day, giving me his final words of advice and warning.
Personally, I did not know any longer what to do, or say, or think. I was exhausted, bewildered, worn, a prey to a thousand and one conflicting thoughts and emotions. For eighteen months my life had been a martyrdom; no sorrow, no pain, no insult, no trial had been spared me, and now I longed for peace, for sleep, for oblivion. Nothing else mattered.