The bell rings twice.
I see Doctor Socquet, quite pale; I hear some one cry, "Hoo!" and then I hear the most terrible, the most awe-inspiring, the most maddening storm I have ever heard.... I realised afterwards that what I heard at that unforgettable moment were the screams of enthusiasm and the frantic applause of hundreds of people who had heard the verdict: I was acquitted.... But I did not know. How could I understand anything!...
Guards rushed to me and carried me to the Court. The light dazzled me, and the storm rose again, more overwhelming than before. I vaguely saw hundreds of hands raised towards me... I saw hundreds of radiant faces shouting: "Bravo... Bravo... Acquitted... Acquitted...." Still I didn't understand. I took those cries for threats, and believed all those hands wanted to seize me, to tear me to pieces.... And then I looked at the jury, and among all those faces I saw one smiling, and then at last, I understood, and fell back.
Alas, alas. The one face in the world I had so longed to see was not there....
A room.... People are pressing my hand, kissing it, and I see tears in many eyes... and I hear the words, repeated over and over again: "What a trial. What a trial...."
A triumph! Good God!... Marthe is not there.
Never mind what happened afterwards. Doctor Socquet helped me once more, and others too. There were discussions, endless discussions as to how I was to be smuggled away. And there were journalists clambering for my "impressions...." I asked for my daughter to every one... then I begged to be taken home, but was told it was impossible.... The daughter of the Director of the Dépôt most generously consented to "escape" in a motor-car, and thus to "draw" the journalists, whilst in another motor-car I was taken, with Maître Steinhardt, and I believe a Press photographer, to a hotel I have been told that I was extremely bright and gay on the way.... At the hotel, I was told to sit whilst my photograph was being taken, hurriedly, and then I lay on a bed for a short time.... Early in the morning I was taken by motor-car to a nursing home at Le Vésinet, and on the way, I was bright and gay again, and I was photographed again!
I have heard that the photographer was well paid for his work, and that he even sold for a substantial sum a series of articles—to the Matin, of course—about that drive from the Palace of Justice to the Terminus Hotel, and the drive from the Terminus Hotel to Le Vésinet, in which he described at length and in fluent and sensational style, all the bright and gay things he imagined I had said and done....
But why, God of Mercy, was not my Marthe near me?
The reader must wonder, as I have long done myself, what exactly took place during the two hundred minutes that the jury deliberated.