"'My Darling little Meg,—How you must need a less tiring life, my dear child, and how I should love to see you have the strength to give up other people, and to think a little more of yourself and of the care which your health absolutely demands. Try to learn, my adored one, to think of yourself, and to forget wanting always to please others....'
"What does the Prosecution think of this? This woman, always so devoted—nay, too devoted—who knew her? Ignoring the reality, welcoming the most terribly untruthful rumours, never hesitating before inexcusable calumnies, and carried away by the frenzy of writing... journalists have printed the statement that 'Mme. Steinheil detested, abominated her mother.'... I have read and re-read this atrocious libel! And I, who knew the horror of it, have remained silent; yes, during that long Instruction I have allowed the mud to flow, I said nothing. I didn't protest, not even by a gesture, because, not to speak of the professional rule which imposed silence on me, I knew that a solemn hour would come when at last I should have the right to speak to you—the joy to speak to you and to convince you. And it is for such a woman that the penalty of death is tacitly, implicitly, evasively demanded. The penalty of death! What supreme irony! Perhaps you think that the Prosecution wanted to put it on one side by talking to you of the prisoner rather as an accomplice than as the chief author of the crime. Don't be misled: an affirmative verdict on either of these questions means death. Death? But, Monsieur l'Avocat-General, if you had proposed it to the jury, every one in this Court would have revolted....
"To return to this unfortunate and tortured woman. Opinion, which has been misled, has raised a barrier between Mme. Steinheil and the poor and humble. Well, let this barrier be broken down. The prisoner was only too anxious to assist them. Who says so? Marie Boucard, who was her maid for ten years, declared at the Instruction on December 12th, 1908: 'Mme. Steinheil was devoted to the poor.' A former valet, Duclerc, stated: 'She was extremely kind to her servants and all those around her, rendered services to all, and nursed the poor of the district!... In Cote 3040 it is said that: 'Of her old dresses she made with her own hands clothes which were sent afterwards to a charity organisation in Beaucourt.'
"... In the painter's studio the able Mme. Steinheil is ever active. Are costumes needed for her husband's models? As an expert needlewoman she cuts and sews, and under her deft fingers the various materials soon become doublets and hose in the Henry IV. or Louis XIII. style. She works without respite. Sometimes she replaces a model, and for long hours she sits for her husband. Sometimes when a painting has to be completed she handles the brushes, for she is an able artist.... She is the useful collaborator who is ever assisting and completing her husband—that timid, easily depressed, and weak-willed husband....
"But what you wish to know is not only whether the husband was helped as an artist—although that has some importance—but also, and above all, whether as a man and a husband he was abandoned, left aside, and despised. You have heard on this point Mme. Steinheil's two brothers-in-law, M. Geoffroy, and Monsieur Bonnot.... You have at once felt that those witnesses, bitter and hostile, spoke with animosity, and violently took part against their sister-in-law. It was they who stated that she took no care whatever of her husband and left him for three or four months at a time: 'To go on one knows where,' taking no interest whatever in his life or his health. Every word an inaccuracy! It was Mme. Steinheil who bought everything for the house, and even her husband's clothes. That three or four months' journey? It was only an absence of a few weeks in 1907, when Mme. Steinheil went to England with her daughter and the Buisson family. 'To go no one knows where!' Could any words be more misleading? When people don't know, they should remain silent. Messieurs Geoffroy et Bonnot! The way of living and the health of her husband were indifferent to her? True, Steinheil lived as he pleased, but it cannot possibly be said that until his last hour he wasn't cared for by his wife. Doctor Acheray has strongly denied the statements of the brother-in-law, and M. Courtois-Suffit himself told you that at the end of 1907 he was summoned by Mme. Steinheil to examine M. Steinheil.... As for Mme. Buisson, a witness who surely cannot be called partial, she stated that: 'Mme. Steinheil was extremely kind and attentive to her husband, and cared about his health, seeing to it that he followed the diet prescribed for him.'
"... When Mme. Steinheil sang, it was an unforgettable delight. Oh! those hours of artistic beauty which have vanished!... The emotion, the genius of the composer possessed her, overwhelmed her—and carried away by her temperament, she was moved to tears, to anguish.... The guests have lost her salon. They have hardly turned the corner of the street, and she has hardly dried her tears before the poor nervous woman buries her head in her hands and thinks. Of what? Of her power? Of the magnetism of her voice? Her success must make her believe that people are easily conquered by her! Alas! However great her fascination, it is really she, after all, who is dominated by mysterious and invisible forces. How easily it is when one sees how quickly she is self-hypnotised, to realise how easily others may hypnotise her.... Is it possible then that this woman, who has been represented as so strong, was after all but a toy of men and events!
"... The Indictment said to Mme. Steinheil: 'You wanted to get rid of your husband in order to marry M. Bdl.' And M. Bdl. replied: 'There was no thought in me of marrying again, and these are the reasons why: I had a daughter of twelve, and I wish to bring her up before thinking of marriage—and even then it isn't certain that I should have thought of it. Besides, I had absolutely decided not to give a step-mother to my daughter, aged eighteen, who might marry soon....'
"... I wished M. Bdl. to let you hear the whole truth, and M. Bdl., asked by me in this Court whether he had given Mme. Steinheil reasons to hope that he would marry her, told you that she could not possibly have conceived any. I pressed the question, and he was firm in his reply: 'Mme. Steinheil on this matter of marriage did not and could not have had any illusion.'
"... Let us then put aside the so-called motive of the crime.
"... The accusation of matricide has been abandoned; the prosecution rightly feared your common sense; but, for a whole year public opinion believed her guilty because the newspapers printed these atrocious words, borrowed from the Instruction: 'She hated her mother.' And now that the unfortunate Mme. Steinheil, represented as an unnatural daughter, has been despised and loathed; now that, under the cover of this monstrous accusation of matricide, has grown up that other accusation, that of the murder of her husband, your conviction and your sense of justice, Monsieur l'Avocat Général, make a curtsey to her and depart. It is all very well for you, but it isn't enough for her. No, it is not enough for this poor woman, yesterday accused of two murders, to be accused to-day of one only—and I may say that later on, when people think over this trial, they will pity her profoundly, and feel indignant at the accumulation of errors against her....