The principal witness for the defence of Madame Caillaux will be her husband, and as is usual in France where every witness is allowed and is expected to tell the examining magistrate who collects evidence before the trial everything he knows which bears in any way upon the case, Monsieur Caillaux has gone at length into his wife’s motives for the crime, and has described very fully the happenings on March 16, 1914, when the murder was committed. He was examined by Monsieur Boucard in his room at the Palace of Justice on April 7 and 8, immediately after the evidence of the President of the Republic had been taken. Monsieur Joseph Caillaux is the son of Monsieur Eugène Alexandre Caillaux, who was Inspector of Finance and Minister of State. He has been married twice. [Pg 88]

His first wife was Madame Gueydan, who was the divorced wife of a Monsieur Jules Dupré. Monsieur Caillaux married her in 1906. Monsieur Caillaux and his first wife did not live very happily, and their relations became more than strained in July 1909, after the fall of the Clemenceau Cabinet, in which Monsieur Caillaux was Minister of Finance. In September of that year Monsieur Caillaux and his wife were at Mamers. One night, Monsieur Caillaux declared to the examining magistrate, a packet of letters disappeared from a drawer in his writing-table. Two of these letters were letters written by Monsieur Caillaux to Madame Léo Claretie (née Raynouard). Madame Claretie was at that time (September 1909) already divorced from her husband. As we know, she became Monsieur Caillaux’s wife in 1911. These two letters, which disappeared from Monsieur Caillaux’s writing-table are the two letters to which reference is made at the end of the last chapter, letters which Monsieur and Madame Caillaux believed to be in the possession of Monsieur Calmette. The letters were of a most intimate character. One, a very short one, was written on letter paper with the [Pg 89] heading of the Conseil Général de la Sarthe. The second, written on paper of the Chamber of Deputies, was a long sixteen-page letter containing, Monsieur Caillaux said, the story for the last few years of all the intimacies of his life. “In this letter,” Monsieur Caillaux said, “I told my future wife, at length, of the reasons, many of which were based on political grounds, which prevented me from freeing myself immediately from my wife (Madame Gueydan) and from marrying her.” Monsieur Caillaux was much upset at the discovery that Madame Gueydan-Caillaux had possession of these letters, and for their restitution he offered his wife either a complete reconciliation or a divorce. Madame Gueydan-Caillaux accepted the reconciliation with her husband, and on November 5, 1909, the parties met in the presence of Monsieur Privat-Deschanel, the secretary of the Ministry of Finance, and an intimate friend of Monsieur Caillaux’s, at Monsieur Caillaux’s house, 12 Rue Pierre Charron. In Monsieur Privat-Deschanel’s presence the letters were solemnly burned, together with others bearing on the disagreement between husband and wife. Before they were burned Madame [Pg 90] Gueydan-Caillaux gave her word of honour to her husband and to Monsieur Privat-Deschanel that she had kept no photograph and no copy of the letters. Their destruction was followed by a complete reconciliation. Monsieur Caillaux declared that as far as he was concerned the reconciliation was sincere, that he gave up all thought of Madame Raynouard-Claretie, his present wife, and he asked Monsieur Boucard to call on Monsieur Privat-Deschanel to bear witness to this. Some months later Monsieur Caillaux found, he says, that it was quite impossible for him to remain friends with his wife, and at the beginning of July 1910 he instituted divorce proceedings. The divorce was pronounced on March 9, 1911 by agreement between the two parties. Very soon after, in November of the same year, Monsieur Caillaux was married in Paris to the divorced wife of Monsieur Léo Claretie, who is now in prison for the murder of Monsieur Gaston Calmette. As a curious sidelight on the mixture of intimate home details and of politics in the Caillaux drama it is worth while remembering here, that in her evidence to the [Pg 91] examining magistrate Madame Gueydan, Monsieur Caillaux’s first wife, stated the reasons, as she understood them, for this change of mind on the part of Monsieur Caillaux. She declared that in November 1909 Monsieur Caillaux, being a candidate for re-election in the Sarthe District feared that her possession of the letters and her antagonism to himself might make trouble for him during the electoral campaign. In April 1910 the election was over and he was elected, he feared her no longer, wanted to marry his present wife, and instituted divorce proceedings in consequence in July, forcing her to allow herself to be divorced by the sheer deadweight of his influence, which if exercised against her would, she knew, have prohibited her from obtaining the services of the best counsel and have reduced her to absolute penury. In October 1911 when Monsieur Caillaux was Prime Minister, his chef de cabinet, Monsieur Desclaux, told him one day that a journalist, Monsieur Vervoort, who was on the Gil Blas, had been offered by Madame Gueydan, his former wife, the right to publish certain letters. The details which Monsieur Vervoort gave about these letters, referred [Pg 92] exactly, Monsieur Caillaux said, to the two letters which his former wife had burned in his presence, and to a letter which appeared in the Figaro of March 13, 1914, in facsimile. This letter was written by Monsieur Caillaux to his first wife, Madame Gueydan, before he married her. Like the others it was a love letter with long passages about politics in it. It was written thirteen years ago, but it contained Monsieur Caillaux’s statement: “I have crushed the income-tax while appearing to defend it.” (J’ai écrasé l’imp?t sur le revenu en ayant l’air de le défendre.) It is this letter portions of which the Figaro published in facsimile. It was written in Monsieur Caillaux’s well-known handwriting, and he had signed it “Ton Jo”. The intimacy of the “Ton” was of course in itself something of an outrage when it appeared in a newspaper, for the letter was written to another man’s wife.

Monsieur Caillaux considered, he said, that the letters (the “Ton Jo” letter and the other two) formed a trilogy, so that if one were published, publication of the two others was likely. When Monsieur Desclaux told him what Monsieur Vervoort had said, Monsieur Caillaux [Pg 93] answered, “These letters have been stolen from me. Their publication would cause me pain because of their intimate bearing on my private life. I cannot believe that any journalist could have so little respect for himself or his profession as to make use of such weapons.” Monsieur Desclaux replied that neither Monsieur Vervoort nor his editor, Monsieur Pierre Mortier, were going to use the letters. Some weeks after this Monsieur Caillaux married his present wife. Monsieur Caillaux at this point in his evidence broke off to declare to Monsieur Boucard that his second marriage was a very happy one. This declaration was not as unnecessary as it sounds at first sight, for long before the actual drama, during the weeks of the bitter campaign in the Figaro against the Minister of Finance, from January’s beginning till the day of M. Calmette’s death, and afterwards, Paris gossip had been very busy with the names of both men. They were said to be rivals in their private lives. I do not care to go into the details of the gossip which associated their names in rivalry, for this gossip, in which another woman’s name was mentioned, is decidedly unpleasant. Monsieur Calmette’s [Pg 94] married life would have been cut short by the law courts if death had not intervened, and if Monsieur Calmette had been killed on March 17, instead of on the 16th, his wife would no longer have been Madame Calmette. Divorce proceedings between the two had culminated, and the divorce would have been made absolute on that day. As it was Madame Calmette, whose father, Monsieur Prestat, is the chairman of the Figaro Company, learned the news of her husband’s murder only the day after it occurred. She had been away from Paris, and returned in the evening of March 16. As she left the railway station she heard the newspaper hawkers shouting the news, but believing that they were announcing the fall of the Cabinet did not take sufficient interest in the details to buy a paper. Next morning telegrams of condolence from her friends, and perusal of the morning papers told her what had happened, and incidentally apprised her that she inherited as his widow a much larger share of Monsieur Calmette’s large fortune than would otherwise have been hers. Gaston Calmette was of course a very rich man, for some years ago Monsieur Chauchard, the founder and principal [Pg 95] shareholder of the Magasins du Louvre had left him a large slice of his great wealth. Paris gossip had, as I have said, been busy linking the names of Messieurs Calmette and Caillaux, and this is not to be wondered at when it is remembered that Monsieur Calmette was on the point of being divorced, that Monsieur Caillaux had been divorced once from Madame Gueydan-Caillaux, the divorced wife of Monsieur Dupré, and that his present wife was the divorced wife of another man. Monsieur Caillaux in his evidence to Monsieur Boucard declared, however, that the stories of a disunion in his married life were absolute nonsense, and that it was so absurd to say that there was any disunion between him and his present wife that the two of them used to laugh at the gossip to which I have referred. He added that there was no reason for any personal animosity towards himself on Monsieur Calmette’s part, and that he had never given him any reason for such animosity. “On several occasions,” he said, “during the last few months I was asked to start a campaign against Monsieur Calmette personally, and papers to support it [Pg 96] were brought to me. I always refused these offers.” Monsieur Caillaux then spoke of the other documents in Monsieur Calmette’s possession. These were of course the letter written by the Procureur Général, Monsieur Victor Fabre, which Monsieur Barthou read in the Chamber of Deputies on March 17, and other documents which are known as “the green papers.” These were telegrams and copies of telegrams referring to the incident of Agadir. They were of so grave a nature that Monsieur Calmette had been asked not to publish them for diplomatic reasons. “I should like to point out” (said Monsieur Caillaux), “that I could have no possible fear personally of the publication of these documents. On the contrary I should as far as I am myself concerned have been glad to see them published. A day will come when time has smoothed over old sores, and I shall be able to speak freely. I have written a book on Agadir, and it will be seen when that can be published that the documents, the letters, and the telegrams in this book will convince all Frenchmen, not only of my patriotism, but of my political clearness of vision.” Monsieur Caillaux declared that he knew exactly what was [Pg 97] going on in the Figaro office, and that he knew that Monsieur Calmette would make use of any weapons in his power to cause his overthrow. He then referred to a conversation in the street under a gas lamp between Monsieur Barthou and Madame Gueydan, his, Monsieur Caillaux’s, former wife. During this conversation, he said, Madame Gueydan had read extracts from letters to Monsieur Barthou, and Monsieur Caillaux declared that he had understood from Monsieur Barthou that these letters were the two private letters which had been stolen from him. The examining magistrate confronted Monsieur Barthou and Monsieur Caillaux at this point, and Monsieur Barthou stated that Monsieur Caillaux must have been mistaken. It was true that he had had a conversation with Madame Gueydan, but the letters she read to him were the Fabre letter and the “Ton Jo” letter, and it was to them that Monsieur Barthou had alluded afterwards in his conversation with Monsieur Caillaux. When the “Ton Jo” letter appeared in the Figaro on March 13 Monsieur Caillaux was greatly upset, although the more [Pg 98] personal portions of the letter had been cut. On the next day, Saturday the 14th, he stated, he received an anonymous letter saying that the Figaro was going to publish the other two letters, and the same day he received from other sources confirmation of this. “I had told my wife all about these things,” he said. “She was entirely in my confidence, and she expected these stolen letters to be published. Their publication would have affected me comparatively little, but would have wounded my wife in her dignity as a woman, and distressed her more than I can say.” Monsieur Caillaux then told the examining magistrate the events of the day of the murder as he knew them, beginning with the statement that his wife’s nerves were shattered, and that she was and had been for some time, in a state of considerable over-excitement. She read the Figaro every morning, her general health was bad, and the campaign had overpowered her. “At nine o’clock on the morning of March 16 my wife walked into my dressing-room with the Figaro in her hand,” said Monsieur Caillaux. “She showed me the paper with a headline ‘Intermède Comique—Ton Jo.’ ‘Presently,’ she said, ‘we shall see your pet name for me in the public Press like this,’ and she threw the paper angrily on a chair. ‘Can’t you put a stop to this campaign?’ she asked me. And we decided to consult Monsieur Monier the President of the Civil Tribunal of the Seine.”

“It was my intention to go and see him that day at half-past one, but I forgot that he would be busy at the Palace of Justice at that time. I had to go to the meeting of the Cabinet at the Elysée, and when Monsieur Monier called at half-past ten my wife received him alone.” Monsieur Caillaux then repeated his conversation with his wife when she called for him before luncheon at the Ministère de Finances. His evidence on this point and the evidence of Madame Caillaux are identical. From the examining magistrate’s report of the evidence given by Monsieur Caillaux he appears to have said nothing to his wife of his own conversation with the President of the Republic. Monsieur Caillaux confirms his wife’s statement that he said to her, “I shall go and smash Calmette’s face.” Their car was in the Rue Royale when Madame Caillaux asked him whether he intended to do so that day. “I answered,” Monsieur Caillaux said, “No, not to-day. I shall choose my own time, but the time is not far off.” [Pg 100]

After luncheon, as Monsieur Caillaux was leaving the house, Madame Caillaux told him that she was afraid she would not be able to dine at the Italian Embassy. “She certainly looked ill and worn out,” Monsieur Caillaux said, “and I asked her to send my servant to the Ministry of Finance with my evening clothes. I understand that my wife sent a telephone message to the Italian Embassy a little later to say that I should go to the dinner without her. This, I would like to point out, shows that she had no idea at that time of what was going to happen, for if she had made up her mind then, she would either have said that neither of us was going to the Italian Embassy or she would have said nothing. I left my wife without any apprehensions, except that I was uneasy at her weakness and the condition of her nerves. At about three o’clock that afternoon I met Monsieur Ceccaldi at the Senate, and told him how uneasy I felt. When I returned to the Ministry of Finance I learned what had happened, and went to the police-station at once. My wife’s first words to me when I got there and saw her were, ‘I do hope that I haven’t killed him. I merely wanted to give him a lesson. [Pg 101]’”

This was the end of Monsieur Caillaux’s evidence in the examining magistrate’s room at the Palace of Justice on April 8, 1914. Monsieur Privat-Deschanel was called and confirmed that portion of it which referred to the burning of the Gueydan-Caillaux letters, and the declaration by Monsieur Caillaux’s first wife that she had kept no copies or photographs of them. “The scene,” said Monsieur Privat-Deschanel, “was such a moving one, and impressed me so deeply, that though it happened four years ago everything that was done and every word that was spoken have remained graven on my memory.”