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THE CAILLAUX DRAMA


[Illustration: _Waiting._]


THE CAILLAUX DRAMA

by

JOHN N. RAPHAEL







London: Max Goschen Ltd
20 Great Russell Street W.C.
MCMXIV



TO MY MOTHER




CONTENTS

   CHAP.                                     PAGE

     I THE STORY OF THE DRAMA                   1
    II CELL NO. 12                             44
   III THE CRIME AND THE PUBLIC                64
    IV MONSIEUR CAILLAUX’S EXAMINATION         87
     V THE CAMPAIGN OF THE “FIGARO”           102
    VI CALMETTE _v._ CAILLAUX                 114
   VII THE “TON JO” LETTER                    143
  VIII AGADIR                                 150
    IX L’AFFAIRE ROCHETTE                     179
     X “THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH...”       230
    XI ABOUT FRENCH POLITICS                  251
   XII BEFORE THE LAST ACT OF THE DRAMA       267
       INDEX                                  307




                    ILLUSTRATIONS


  “WAITING”                                              _Frontispiece_

  OFFICES OF “LE FIGARO” ON THE EVENING OF THE MURDER           20

  GASTON CALMETTE IN HIS OFFICE AT THE “FIGARO”                 20

  M. BOUCARD (THE EXAMINING MAGISTRATE) AND THE DOCTORS
  LEAVING THE PRIVATE HOSPITAL WHERE M. CALMETTE DIED           26

  M. VICTOR FABRE, THE PROCUREUR GÉNÉRAL                        57

  THE FUNERAL OF M. CALMETTE                                    63

  THE BROTHERS, SONS AND RELATIVES OF M. CALMETTE AT THE
  FUNERAL                                                       67

  MME. CAILLAUX (AND DETECTIVE) ON HER WAY TO THE LAW COURTS
  TO BE EXAMINED                                                71

  SŒUR LEONIDE                                                  77

  THE CORRIDOR OUTSIDE THE PISTOLES                             81

  “JEANNE,” THE “SOUBRETTE” OF PISTOLE NO. 12                   85

  THE LORRY WHICH PARIS JOURNALISTS THOUGHT WAS FULL OF
  MME. CAILLAUX’S FURNITURE                                     90

  LA COUR DES FILLES IN SAINT LAZARE                            90

  MADAME CAILLAUX’S CELL EXACTLY AS IT IS                      102

  MONSIEUR CAILLAUX IN HIS OFFICE AT THE MINISTÈRE DES
  FINANCES                                                     108

  PRESIDENT POINCARÉ GIVES EVIDENCE ON OATH IN THE CAILLAUX
  DRAMA BEFORE THE PRESIDENT OF THE APPEAL COURT, WHO
  WAITED   ON HIM FOR THIS PURPOSE AT THE ELYSÉE               122

  MONSIEUR CAILLAUX LEAVING THE LAW COURTS                     131

  M. PRIVAT-DESCHANEL WHO WITNESSED THE DESTRUCTION OF
  THE LETTERS BY MME. GUEYDAN-CAILLAUX                         140

  M. BARTHOU MOUNTING THE STAIRS OF THE LAW COURTS ON HIS
  WAY TO GIVE EVIDENCE IN THE CAILLAUX CASE                    149

  MONSIEUR CAILLAUX’S FRIEND, M. CECCALDI                      179

  THE “TON JO” LETTER FROM THE “FIGARO”                        197

  ROCHETTE IN COURT                                            241

  MONSIEUR BARTHOU                                             300

  MME. CAILLAUX IN THE DRESS SHE WAS TO WEAR AT THE
  ITALIAN EMBASSY ON THE EVENING OF THE MURDER                 339

  M. JOSEPH CAILLAUX                                           350




I

THE STORY OF THE DRAMA


Late on Monday afternoon, March 16, 1914, a rumour fired imaginations,
like a train of gunpowder, all over Paris. In newspaper offices, in
cafés, in clubs, people asked one another whether they had heard the
news and whether the news were true. It seemed incredible. The wife of
the Minister of Finance, said rumour, Madame Joseph Caillaux, one of
the spoiled children of Paris society, had gone to the office of the
_Figaro_, had waited there an hour or more for the managing editor,
Monsieur Gaston Calmette, had been received by him, and had shot him
dead in his own office. Nobody believed the story at first. Nobody
could believe it. The very possibility of such a happening made it
appear impossible. It was known, of course, that for some weeks before
the _Figaro_ had been waging an unsparing campaign against the Minister
of Finance. It was known that Monsieur Caillaux had been and was
infuriated at this campaign, but nobody believed that tragedy had
followed. There was a rush to the _Figaro_ office. Paris is a small
town compared with London, and the _Figaro_ building in the Rue
Drouot is in a more central position in the throbbing news and
sensation-loving heart of Paris than is either Piccadilly or Fleet
Street in London. Within ten minutes of the first news of the tragedy
there was a large crowd gathered in the Rue Drouot, and even those who
could not get into the _Figaro_ building soon received confirmation
that the drama really had occurred. People had seen a large and
luxurious motor-car stationed outside the building. There was nothing
at all unusual in this, for the offices of the _Figaro_ are the resort
in the afternoon of many people with big motor-cars. What was unusual,
and had attracted notice, was the fact that the driver of the car had
worn the tricolour cockade which in Paris is worn only by the drivers
of cars or carriages belonging to the Ministers. Even this evidence was
in no way conclusive, for courtesy permits Ambassadors and Ministers
accredited to the French Government by foreign countries to give their
servants the red white and blue cockade, and it was thought by many
that the car had not belonged to a French Minister at all, but was the
property of an Ambassador. Then the story gained precision. A woman, it
was said, escorted by police, had come out of the _Figaro_ office and
seated herself in the car. The driver, as she entered, had removed his
tricolour cockade and driven round the corner to the police-station.
The doors of the _Figaro_ office were closed and guarded. A few minutes
later all Paris knew the story. In the big grey motor-car in which
she had driven to the Rue Drouot that afternoon, Madame Caillaux had
been taken in custody to the police-station in the Rue du Faubourg
Montmartre. Monsieur Gaston Calmette, the editor of the _Figaro_,
lay dying in his office. His friend, Doctor Reymond, who was with
him, gave little hope that his life could be saved, and those of the
members of the staff of the paper who could be approached could only
murmur confirmation of the same sad news. Later in the evening Monsieur
Calmette was taken out to Neuilly to the private hospital of another
friend, Professor Hartmann. He died there just before midnight.
Madame Caillaux had arrived in her motor-car at No. 26 Rue Drouot at
about five o’clock, and had asked for Monsieur Calmette. She was told
that Monsieur Calmette was out, but that he would certainly arrive
before long. “Then I will wait,” she said.

[Illustration: _Agence Nouvelle—Photo, Paris_
OFFICES OF _LE FIGARO_ ON THE EVENING OF THE MURDER]

[Illustration: _Agence Nouvelle—Photo, Paris_
GASTON CALMETTE IN HIS OFFICE AT THE _FIGARO_]

The customs of a Paris newspaper differ considerably from those of
newspapers in London. They are, if I may put it so, more social. In a
London newspaper office nearly all the business of the day with the
outside world is transacted by express letter, by telegram, or over the
telephone. The editor and his collaborators see fewer members of the
public in a week in the offices of a London newspaper than the editor
and collaborators of a Paris newspaper of the same importance see in an
afternoon. The difference in the hours of newspaper work in Paris and
in London, the difference in the characteristics of Frenchmen and of
Englishmen have a great deal to do with this difference in newspaper
methods. To begin with, the London newspaper goes to press much earlier
than does the newspaper in Paris, for Paris papers have fewer and later
trains to catch, and “copy” is therefore finished much later in Paris.
The principal London editors are invariably in their offices at latest
at noon every day, and prefer to see their visitors between the hours
of twelve and four o’clock. In Paris practically every newspaper editor
receives between five and seven in the evening, and it is very rare
to find heads of newspaper departments (the business side of course
excepted) in their offices before five P.M. In other words the
business of the day begins at about five o’clock in a Paris newspaper
office, when the business of the evening begins in London and the
business of the day is finished, and the real hard work of the night
staff hardly begins until ten. The hour at which Madame Caillaux called
therefore, to see Monsieur Calmette, was a perfectly normal one. She
was told that he would certainly come in before long, and was asked
for her name. She did not give it, said that she would wait, and was
shown into a waiting-room where curiously enough she sat down directly
beneath a large framed portrait of the King of Greece, who met his
death at the hands of a murderer not very long ago. Madame Caillaux
waited over an hour. We learned, afterwards, that in her muff, during
this long period of waiting, she carried the little revolver which she
had bought that day, and with which she was presently to shoot Monsieur
Calmette to death. She grew impatient at length, made inquiries of
one of the men in uniform whose duty it is to announce visitors, and
learned that Monsieur Calmette, who had just arrived, was now in his
office with his friend Monsieur Paul Bourget, the well-known novelist.
“If Madame will give me her card,” said the man. Madame Caillaux took a
card from her case, slipped it into an envelope which was on the table
by her side, and gave it to the man in uniform, who took it to Monsieur
Calmette’s office. Monsieur Calmette and Monsieur Bourget were on the
point of leaving the _Figaro_ office together for dinner. Monsieur
Calmette showed his friend the visiting card which had just been handed
to him. “Surely you will not see her?” Monsieur Bourget said. “Oh yes,”
said Monsieur Calmette, “she is a woman, and I must receive her.”
Monsieur Bourget left his friend as Madame Caillaux was shown into the
room. A few moments afterwards the crack of a revolver startled everybody
in the building. The interview had been a very short and tragic one.
Madame Caillaux, drawing her revolver from her muff, had emptied all
six chambers of it. Gaston Calmette fell up against a bookcase in the
room. He was mortally wounded. There was a rush from all the other
offices of members of the _Figaro_ staff, the revolver was snatched
from the woman’s hand, a member of the staff who happened to be a
doctor made a hasty examination, and a friend of M. Calmette’s, Dr.
Reymond, was telephoned for immediately. Somebody ran or telephoned for
the police, but for a long time Madame Caillaux remained in a passage
near the room where her victim lay dying. Before the ambulance was
brought on which Monsieur Calmette was carried out into the street he
had time to give his keys and pocket-book to one of his collaborators,
and to say farewell to them. Madame Caillaux had said very little
before she was taken away. When the revolver was snatched from her hand
she had said, “There is no more justice in France.” She had also said:
“There was no other way of putting a stop to it,” alluding, no doubt, to
the campaign in the _Figaro_ against her husband. Then she had given
herself into the hands of the police, and the curtain had fallen on
this first act of the drama.

[Illustration: _Agence Nouvelle—Photo, Paris_

M. BOUCARD (THE EXAMINING MAGISTRATE) AND THE DOCTORS LEAVING
THE PRIVATE HOSPITAL WHERE M. CALMETTE DIED.

M. Boucard is in front]

The first feeling in Paris when the crime became generally known
was one of stupefaction. The special editions of the evening papers
appeared while Paris was at dinner, were snatched with wild eagerness
from the hands of the hawkers, and nothing else was talked of all
that evening. Gradually, as details became known, a popular wave of
indignation against the murderess became so fierce that the police,
informed of it, took special measures to preserve order, and numbers
of police with revolvers in the great leather cases which are worn in
emergencies appeared in the streets. As a proof of the hold which the
drama took immediately on the imagination of the public, it may be
mentioned that the theatres were almost empty that evening and that in
each entr’acte the audience rushed out of the theatre altogether to
get further news, or if a few remained, they waited in the auditorium
for news to appear on the screens usually devoted to advertisements,
instead of strolling about the theatre corridors as they usually do. An
immense crowd gathered round the police-station in the Rue du Faubourg
Montmartre, where Madame Caillaux had been taken. The crowd, composed
for the most part of riffraff—for the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre is a
favourite haunt of the very worst kind of criminals—formed a surging
mass in front of the police-station with which the strong force of
police found it difficult to cope. Barely a quarter of an hour after
the police commissioner, Monsieur Carpin, had begun to question Madame
Caillaux, her husband arrived at the police-station in a taxicab. He
was recognized and hooted by the crowd, but though his usually ruddy
face was deadly pale he gave no other sign that he had noticed this
hostility. The only man who did not recognize Monsieur Caillaux was the
policeman on duty at the door. He had orders to allow no one to pass,
and barred his passage. “I am the Minister of Finance,” said Monsieur
Caillaux, and pushing past the man, who stood and stared at him, he
added, “You might as well salute me.” Other Ministers and politicians
of note had forced their way into the police-station, and a number of
journalists were among them. Stories of all sorts circulated, one to
the effect that Monsieur and Madame Caillaux had had a stormy scene,
and that the Minister had reproached his wife bitterly for what she had
done; another, which proved to be true later on, that he had telephoned
to the Prime Minister, and resigned his portfolio and his seat in the
Cabinet. Monsieur Carpin, the police commissioner, received some of the
journalists in his office, and gave them a short report of what had
occurred. “I saw Madame Caillaux at once when she came,” he said. “She
was perfectly self-possessed, but complained of feeling cold.” “You are
aware,” she said, “of the campaign which Monsieur Gaston Calmette was
waging against my husband. I went to some one, whose name I prefer not
to mention, for advice how to put a stop to this campaign. He told me
that it could not be stopped. A letter was published. I knew that other
letters were to be published too. This morning I bought a revolver, and
this afternoon I went to the office of the _Figaro_. I had no intention
of killing Monsieur Calmette. This I affirm, and I regret my act
deeply.” I quote this first statement of Madame Caillaux as Monsieur
Carpin repeated it to the journalists in his office on the evening
on which the crime was committed, and as the _Figaro_ and other
newspapers reproduced it word for word next morning. As will be seen
later, these first statements which the prisoner made are of vital
importance. It was now nine o’clock. The journalists were told that
Monsieur Boucard, the examining magistrate, had given orders for Madame
Caillaux to be locked up in St. Lazare prison, and were asked to leave
the police-station. The crowd outside in the streets had in some way
learned that Madame Caillaux was going, and became denser and more
menacing. The officials inside the