A great uproar ensued; there were exclamations of protest, and M. Trouard-Riolle, turning to the public, cried with a sneer: "I do as I please, and laugh at your comments!" which remark only increased the uproar....
I wondered how it would all end. What did it all mean? Everybody was talking at the same time; I could hear and see men speak excitedly and even laugh. Why those personal discussions between the prosecution and witnesses?... And all the time I was enduring an unspeakable agony, which increased with each hearing. Did everybody then, except myself, forget that I was accused of a ghastly murder?...
I wept.... And then doctors and experts succeeded one another at the witnesses' bar.... It was horrible to listen to those gruesome details.... Dr. Courtois-Suffit declared that he believed my mother had been killed before my husband, and that there was more than one murderer. Dr. Augier stated that he utterly failed to find any trace of poison or narcotic in the bodies of the victims, and Dr. Balthazard made a lengthy lecture about the autopsy, the spots found on the carpet, the cotton wool gags and what not.... It was all technical, so far-fetched, so useless, that I tried not to listen, and for once my eyes wandered to the left of the Court, where barristers, journalists and the public were densely packed.
I saw M. Renouard, M. Scott, M. Sem and other artists making sketches, and various photographers furtively taking snapshots. There was M. Claretie, Director of the Théâtre Français; M. Bernstein, the well-known playwright; M. Paul Adam, the gifted author.... I saw several of the Inspectors who, for months, had followed clues and done their best to assist me.... I saw the white-haired Rochefort, the famous journalist whose inexhaustible fund of combativeness was allowed, decade after decade, to attack anybody and everybody. In the days of Napoleon III he was attacking M. de Morny and the Imperial Government in the Figaro; later, he attacked the Republic. He had been a frenzied Boulangist and a frenzied Anti-Dreyfusard; now he was a frenzied Anti-Steinheilist, if I may invent this word. Day after day, during my trial, he published an article against me. Later, I saw some of these articles, and found they were written in the most abusive, rankling and savage style. There was hardly an insult that was not hurled at me in those exasperated—and exasperating—onslaughts, and the irrepressible "Rochefort," the Marquis of Rochefort-Luçay, after exhausting his usual vocabulary of scorn, defamation and scurrility, found a wonderful name for me, an elegant, refined, picturesque name, which he repeated in all his articles; he called me "the Black Panther"!...
After the hearing—and between the brief adjournments which the Judge granted when I was too exhausted or too ill—batches of letters were handed me.... Among them were love-letters, including daily messages from an important personage in the Court, and an "ardent admirer."... The bitter irony of it all!...
I was so excited and demoralised that the next day, finding that I was being once more tortured with questions, to which I had already answered again and again, I exclaimed: "Do not exasperate me any more.... So far, I have shown complete discretion, but if I am driven to it, I shall cease to be discrete!" My counsel jumped up from his bench in front of me and beseeched me to be calm, I even think he threatened to leave the court if I talked that way again.... Poor Maître Aubin! How glad he must have been when the trial was over!...
At that sixth hearing, a number of minor witnesses were heard; M. Souloy, the jeweller, from whose evidence the fact stood out that of the twelve jewels belonging to me and the eleven belonging to my mother, eighteen were never found; M. Boin who admitted that in some cases, at least, I possessed double sets of identical jewels; M. and Mme. Chabrier, and others.... But the chief depositions were those of M. Hutin and M. de Labruyère of "Night of the Confession" fame!
M. de Labruyère spoke in a doleful way, but M. Hutin made an attempt at cheap humour. He said, for instance: "Madame Steinheil was in a terrible state of depression—so was I," and "One may be a journalist and still be a man, especially in the presence of a woman."
After he had politely bowed in my direction, M. de Labruyère gave evidence and made a narrative of the "Night of the Confession" which was transferred, as it were, from M. Hutin's speech, and of course he denied that he or his colleague had in the least bullied me.
I may state here that the whole "audience"—excepting, naturally, the magistrates—gave vent to unmistakable expressions of indignation at the conduct of certain "enterprising" journalists in my case.