I lunched at home. Just as I was about to sit at the table the telephone bell rang, and I was told that the President himself wished to speak to me. Would I kindly hang on? A few seconds after I heard the voice of Félix Faure: "I must see you at all costs to-day; I wish to hand you something.... I don't feel quite myself.... By the way, I have noticed, these past few days, that you were quite right in your suspicions. Some one has been rummaging amongst my private papers. It is essential that you should fetch those I have had to write without you lately."
He stopped to catch his breath, and then continued: "I thought you looked very pale when you last came here.... But if you can manage to sit for your portrait at Bonnat's, you ought to try to give me a few minutes."
I replied: "If I don't feel too tired I will come, just for a moment, to take the papers you talk about and to beseech you to look more seriously after your health. You, too, looked quite out of sorts at the Elysée...."
His voice was different from his usual voice; it was weak, lacked clearness. I told him so, and he remarked: "You are right; this affaire is killing me. I have more enemies than ever before, and then, during your absence, I have lived too well, perhaps...."
He seemed to hesitate, and finally repeated: "Do come this afternoon, I entreat you...."
After lunch I went to Bonnat. During the afternoon the telephone bell rang, and I was told that the President absolutely insisted that I should call on him soon without fail.... I am sure he must have been at the Elysée at the time, and I cannot see, therefore, how the President could have become suddenly ill at the house of a friend, that afternoon, and have been hurriedly driven back to the Elysée in a landau, as certain papers declared afterwards. At any rate, if Félix Faure went out that afternoon, he never told me, when I met him....
After the sitting I felt tired, and made up my mind not to go to the Elysée. Outside, however, I remembered the insistence of the President and drove to the Palace. I entered by the door in the Rue du Colisée. I saw the President standing at the open window near the little waiting-room. Blondel, his private secretary, was with him. I was very much struck by the President's pallor. It was not dark yet; it must have been about five o'clock.
As soon as I entered, he said to me, whilst Blondel politely withdrew: "There is something wrong with me. Ah! why have you not been around me all these days? I have lost control of myself.... I am so tired of all these intrigues and hopeless complications in the Dreyfus case. I have tried to forget my worries, and have been taking a great deal of that drug... which I ought never to touch. I have done so even this afternoon."
He seemed to conceal something from me, probably a visit which he dared not confess to me.
The blue petit salon, where he usually received me, and where we always wrote his memoirs, was in the hands of the decorators. So he took me to a room where I had never been before, close to M. Le Gall's study. To my great surprise, M. Le Gall was not in, but the faithful Blondel was sitting in the study. The door leading to it was open, for the President complained that he could not breathe easily, and wanted as much air as possible. I was not too alarmed, for, though unusually pale, the President did not look worse than I had seen him look on other occasions, a few hours after he had been indulging in that favourite—and dangerous—drug of his.