"Madame S. 'I know, I tell you I know. Examining magistrates torture their prisoners, whether there exist proofs of their guilt or not, and are ready to do anything to tear a confession from their victims.'
"The President. 'You are speaking foolishly, Madame. For the honour of the Law, I protest.'
"Madame S. 'I have spoken the truth. I ought to know something about examining magistrates....'"
Then the Advocate-General attacked me, and said that I was lying. My counsel jumped up and shouted excitedly: "Sir, I forbid you to insult my client!" There was another uproar, and when it had subsided, I explained at length why I had accused Couillard and Wolff....
A few moments afterwards, the hearing came to an end, and I found myself in my little cell at the Dépôt, surrounded by the kind Sisters of Marie Joseph and their cornettes and wimples, and their long pale-blue veils.
M. Desmoulin came to see me, and also Pastor Arboux, who, alas! through some inconceivable injustice, was not allowed to be present in Court! One of the Sisters gave me a special potion to soothe my nerves and to help me to sleep. But at about 2 A.M. batches of street women were brought in, and their cries, their insults to the Sisters, awoke me as I lay restless, sleepless, on my straw-bed, for the rest of the night, thinking of Marthe and wondering when the end of this terrible nightmare would come. I wrote to my counsel, giving him further explanations, beseeching him to say this or that.... And then I went to the chapel of the Sisters. Not far from this pretty little chapel were the cells in which Bailly, Danton, Camille Desmoulins, Madame Roland, and other great figures of the Revolution had awaited execution.
With the fifth hearing—on Saturday, November 7th—began the examination of the various witnesses. The first on the list was Rémy Couillard, my former valet. He walked quickly to the witness bar, a spare figure, with slit-like eyes, a long nose, hollow cheeks, hair cut very short, large awkward hands, and wearing the uniform of a dragoon—for he was serving his term in the army now.
Couillard took the oath amid an impressive silence—for, as I had been told, he was generally considered as the "pivot of the accusation." He began to tell quickly, the story of how he heard me, on May 30th, 1908, at 5.45 A.M., cry "Rémy, Rémy!" and how he found me bound on the bed in my daughter's room. To every one's amazement, my former valet made statements entirely different from those he made on the morning after the night of the crime. He said, for instance, that he had first undone the cords binding my feet to the bed-posts, and then those with which my wrists were secured; that a blanket and a sheet covered me entirely; that my hands were placed "over one another and resting on the stomach," and that there was no rope round my body....
Maître Aubin, of course, reminded Couillard that he had stated, on May 31st, 1908, that my clothes had slipped up round my neck, that my hands were tied behind and above my head to the bed-posts, that a rope was passed over my body and under the bed, and that after he had first of all undone the cords fastening the wrists, he had with M. Lecoq's assistance undone those round my feet.
Intense excitement prevailed in Court, as Couillard swore he had just spoken the truth, and as my counsel read to him the document written on the morning after the crime under Couillard's dictation, as it were, and signed by him.