Witnesses said that the sorrow of Captain Herail was intense. He was continually weeping, calling on the dead woman, and asking for his three children. It was proved that during the eleven years they were married he had shown the deepest affection for his wife, and it was only the military disgrace she had brought upon him that could have caused him to commit the act.
He was married to his wife in 1904 when he was a lieutenant in the First Regiment of Cuirassiers. She was then Mlle. Henriette Courel. They both belonged to wealthy families and their marriage was an event in fashionable society. They began life under the happiest auspices. They were apparently a well-matched couple. He was very good-tempered and easy-going, while she was a devoted wife and a model housekeeper, but very jealous and extremely exacting.
She required that her husband should have no interest in life apart from her. At the annual military manoeuvres she insisted on following him around, and he, from fear of being made ridiculous, asked her to stay away, but she would not do so. His comrades called her his colonel.
During the testimony relating to these facts Captain Herail's eyes were wet with tears, and finally, when it came to the description of the scene of the killing, he could not restrain himself at all and broke into heartrending sobs.
Then the presiding officer ordered him to stand up and relate what he had to say in defence of his act. His tears continued to flow and at first he was unable to utter an intelligible sentence. He could be heard sobbing:
"My poor wife! My poor wife!"
After a time he was able to make a statement concerning his difficulties with his wife, of which these were the most striking passages:
"If she had only let me fulfill my military duties we should have been the happiest family possible. She was very good and very clever, but she never would permit me to be away from her."
The unfortunate captain, who had faced death from bullets, day after day for months, without a tremor, while his comrades were falling all around him, broke down as he spoke of his dead wife and buried his nails in his flesh, unable to continue. The spectacle was an intensely painful one and caused nearly everybody in the audience to weep, including some of the officers on the bench.