It was in Belfort that I heard an opera for the first time. This was Faust. My father, who was a friend of Gounod, had told me all kinds of things about Gounod's "nice" music, but I was not half as impressed as I thought I should be. Perhaps it was because Faust was too stout, because Valentine sang too loudly as he died, because Mephistopheles was not diabolical enough, and perhaps, too, owing to the fact that Marguerite's spinning-wheel, having been mislaid, had been replaced at the eleventh hour by a—sewing-machine. And to think that they could have found a spinning-wheel in almost any house of the neighbourhood!
It was also at Belfort that I met M. Thiers, with whom my father was well acquainted. This "meeting" took place, I believe, in 1877. I had to hand a huge bouquet to M. Thiers. Every one was calling him "The Liberator and the Saviour of France," and those words so fixed themselves in my mind that I quite forgot the little speech I had learned by heart; and when M. Thiers stepped from his carriage, I handed him the bouquet and said, "There you are, Mr. Saviour" (Monsieur le Sauveur). The little fat and ugly man with the round head, the beady eyes, and the spectacles, took the bouquet, lifted me up and kissed me. Later on he spent an evening at our house, and naturally I asked for a story. Thereupon, describing some wonderful ceremony, he mentioned Napoleon, sixteen horses drawing a funeral car, and a magnificent palace with a golden cupola, near the Seine, in Paris.... And years later, I realised that Thiers had been telling me about the translation of Napoleon's ashes to the Invalids, in the days of King Louis-Philippe, when he was Prime Minister.
We used to go for long walks or rides, my father and I. We both loved to feel the wind in our faces, and we took joy in the smell of the earth, the smell of grass, the voice of the trees. Often he went out without me, but as soon as I was free from my work I went in search of him, fastening the ribbons of my big straw hat as I ran over hill and dale. Instinct led me in the right direction, and in time I found him, and rushing up, rested in his arms, which was ever my way of greeting him. We returned home together, and on the way never failed to admire our favourite old trees, to linger by the lakes we liked best, to gather ferns and foxglove, and to go at least once round the greenhouses.
And we had endless surprises, and we laughed at everything, often for no reason at all. A word, a common thought, the shape of a leaf or of a cloud, sent us into fits of ecstasy or laughter. And my father would kiss me and whisper: "We get on well together, we two, don't we, Puppele;" and I would answer: "I love you, my daddy."
"Quite right, too," he would say. "Try to love me as long as you possibly can. A father like the one you own is worth all the husbands in the world."
What happy days! What a lovely life! How everything smiled on me, how everything seemed good and simple.... Alas! a few years later disenchantment was to begin, bringing in its wake, temptations, weaknesses, struggles and sorrows; and finally the whole fabric of my life was to be brought crashing down in a terrible, "sensational" drama....
I fear that this note of poignant sadness and regret will sound again and again in these pages like a melancholy and distressing leit-motiv.... But how could it be otherwise? How could I fail to realise, in an intensely painful and bitter manner, all that I have lost and all that I have suffered unjustly, when I recall my childhood and my radiant youth, and the days spent in Beaucourt with a mother infinitely loving and a father passionately devoted, and when I compare those years of happiness with the feverish, tangled years that followed and that resulted, after the appalling catastrophe in which I lost my husband and my mother, both foully done to death, in my being tried and imprisoned in Paris on a double charge of murder.
CHAPTER II
YOUTH—MY FATHER'S DEATH—MY MARRIAGE
I MADE my début in society at seventeen. The circle was quite small, for there were Japys and ramifications of the Japys wherever we went, and, of course, as I knew them all, they were nothing new to me. It was only in Belfort that I met people whom I did not know. They were, however, for the most part only passing acquaintances that I made, for my parents guarded their "Puppele" most jealously....
I remember my first ball at Belfort. I wore a very simple gown, made of tulle in three shades of blue, and had a spray of apple-blossom in my hair and another at my waist. My father, taking a seat where he could survey the whole room, said gaily to me: "Meg (an affectionate diminutive for Marguerite), I distrust all these young men. Your entrance has caused a sensation, and all the officers of the garrison are staring at you. I hate it, but, on the other hand, I would have been furious if my daughter had passed unnoticed.... I allow you to dance... with your brother."