The Caillaux Drama. John N. Raphael
in the administration of justice.
Affirms the necessity of a law on parliamentary incompatibility,
And with the resolution to assure, more efficaciously, the separation of political and judicial power,
Passes to the order of the day.
Agence Nouvelle—Photo, Paris
THE BROTHERS, SONS AND RELATIVES OF M. CALMETTE AT THE FUNERAL.
The debate, of which this significant order of the day was the corollary, was not only an extremely interesting, but a very stormy one. In the course of it, a member of the Chamber challenged Monsieur Doumergue, the Prime Minister, to fight him, but the quarrel was smoothed over. Monsieur Briand, Monsieur Barthou, Monsieur Barrès, Monsieur Doumergue, and Monsieur Jaurès all took a very active part in the debate, and when the Chamber finally adjourned till June, in other words till after the general elections, the general impression was that the Doumergue Ministry would not return to power.
With this historic debate ends the first chapter of the Caillaux drama. The vibrations of a revolver shot in a newspaper office in the Rue Drouot have eddied and spread till France was set aquiver. The woman who fired the shot, the wife of the man who an hour before the shot was fired was the most powerful man in France, knew before she was taken to her cell in Saint Lazare that the first consequence of her act had been the headlong downfall of her husband. She must feel now like a child who has pulled up a little stone and caused an avalanche, and not only France but Europe and the whole world are wondering what may go to pieces in the wreckage.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Copy of open letter sent by Monsieur Thalamas to Madame Caillaux:
Madame,
Je n’ai pas l’honneur de vous connaître, mais je sais par expérience quelle est l’infamie de la presse immonde envers les sentiments les plus intimes et les plus sacrés, quelle guerre elle mène contre la famille, les choses privées les plus respectables, et ceux qui luttent contre les privilèges des riches et contre les menées cléricales. Vous en avez tué un. Bravo! Lorsqu’un homme en vient à se mettre ainsi en dehors de la loi morale, il n’est plus qu’un bandit. Et quand la Société ne vous fait pas justice, il n’y a plus qu’à se faire justice soi-même!
Faites de ma lettre l’usage que vous voudrez. Trouvez-y le cri de la conscience d’un honnête homme révolté, et d’un journaliste-député écœuré des procédés de ceux qui déshonorent la presse et le Parlement.
Thalamas
P.S. Ma femme me prie de vous adresser l’expression de sa sympathie. Elle vient de faire sur votre acte un article pour la Dépêche de Versailles. Elle vous l’enverra demain.
Translation:
Madame,
I have not the honour of your acquaintance, but I know by experience the infamy of the unclean Press towards the most intimate and most sacred sentiments, I know the war which it wages against home and family, against the intimacies of life most worthy of respect, against those who oppose the privileges of the rich, and the influence of the priests. You have killed one of them. Well done! When a man puts himself in this way outside all moral laws he is nothing but an outlaw, and when society does not do justice to him the only thing to be done is to take the law into one’s own hands.
Make whatever use you like of my letter. It is the genuine expression of the feelings of revolt of an honourable man’s conscience, the expression of the conscience of a journalist who is a member of the Chamber, and who is disgusted by the methods of those who dishonour both Press and Parliament.
Thalamas
P.S. My wife begs me to assure you of her sympathy. She has written an article on your act for the Dépêche de Versailles. She will send it you to-morrow.
[2] The word crushed is underlined in the original text.
II
CELL NO. 12
Agence Nouvelle—Photo, Paris
MME. CAILLAUX (AND DETECTIVE) ON HER WAY TO THE LAW COURTS TO BE EXAMINED
It is a very short drive from the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre to the prison of Saint Lazare, where Madame Caillaux was taken from the police-station. She had been taken from the office of the Figaro to the police-station in her own luxurious car. She drove to Saint Lazare in one of the horrible red taxicabs which have rattled for too many years about the streets of Paris, with a member of the police force in plain clothes seated beside her, another on the uncomfortable little seat opposite, and a third on the box by the driver. The prison authorities had been advised by telephone of her arrival at the prison, and arrangements had been made to put her into pistole No. 12, the cell in which Louise Michel, Valentine Merelli, Madame Humbert, Madame Steinheil and many other Parisian celebrities awaited their trials. The cab drove into the courtyard of the prison and the gates closed behind it. The police handed their prisoner over, with the usual formalities, to the prison authorities, she was kept waiting while she was inscribed on the prison books, she was searched—for no prisoner escapes this formality—and was told to walk forward to a large open space between two staircases. The house of correction of Saint Lazare is a very old building, which dates from the beginning of the twelfth century. It was a hospital for lepers in 1110, and remained one till 1515, when the monks of the Order of Saint Victor took it over, and abolished the lepers’ hospital. In 1632 Saint Vincent de Paul and the priests of the order became the inmates of Saint Lazare, and in 1779 it became a house of correction and provisional and permanent detention for men. On July 13, 1789, when famine raged in Paris, the mob broke into Saint Lazare, and looted the enormous stock of food which the Lazarists were known to be keeping there. The monks were driven out, the building sacked and the store houses gutted by fire. The convent of Saint Lazare then became a State prison in which suspects were kept. It is now a prison for women. There is room for about twelve hundred prisoners, but at a pinch the old building would hold 1600. The prisoners are divided into three categories. The first consists of women who are awaiting trial, or who have been sentenced to less than a year’s imprisonment. The second division consists of girls under age who have been sentenced to confinement in a house of correction till they are twenty-one, the third division is that of unfortunates whose sentences of imprisonment are short ones. Saint Lazare prison, though of course under State control, is in practice ruled by a body of nuns who, while responsible to the authorities, have really the entire management of the enormous prison in their hands and hold the real power. It is a huge bleak wilderness of stone with echoing corridors and haunting silences, and has been sentenced to demolition for sanitary reasons for many years. But threatened buildings live long in France when they belong to the State. A modern prison, such as Fresnes in France or any of the English prisons, is a pleasure resort compared with Saint Lazare, and there is less difference between Fresnes and a cheap hydropathic than there is between the prison of Saint Lazare and the prison of Fresnes. The silence, the darkness, the cold, damp, and dirt are perhaps the worst of its discomforts, but I have been told by women who have been imprisoned there that the mental and physical torture of the months in which they waited trial surpassed anything that could be imagined. Within an hour after her arrival Madame Caillaux ceased to wear her name and became a number—No. 12. The number she received is considered a favour, for cell No. 12 is the most spacious of all the cells in Saint Lazare.
SŒUR