For the first two days, M. de Valles assumed the office of public prosecutor, or rather of high inquisitor—and the “Tragic Widow” was on the rack. The judge in the black-and-red robes sneered, stormed, threatened, bullied; and turned constantly to the jury with a shrug of the shoulders as though to say: “She denies everything. She has never told anything but lies, and now she is lying again.” Over again and again he brutally accused Madame Steinheil of having assassinated her mother, but never did the accused woman fail to leap up from her chair with the cry: “I adored my mother. Messieurs les Jurés, I swear I adored her.” Another shrug of M. de Valles’ shoulders, and another cynical smile at the jury, when Madame Steinheil spoke of her devotion to her eighteen-year-old daughter. “I love her, and she loves me more fondly than ever—because she believes in my innocence. She has written me the tenderest letters and has visited me constantly in prison. She helped to make the black dress I am wearing.” And further gestures expressive of impatient incredulity on the part of M. de Valles when the “Tragic Widow” shrieked: “Yes; I have been a bad woman. Yes; I have been an immoral woman. Yes; I made false, wicked accusations against Remy Couillard and Alexandre Wolff. But I am not an assassin, a fiend. And only a fiend could murder her mother.” Here the shriek stopped. For some moments the “Tragic Widow” cried bitterly. Then, in Sarah Bernhardt’s melodious voice, she thus addressed the jury: “Gentlemen, I am deeply repentant for all the wrong I have done. Please realise that I was mad—that I was being tortured—when I made those false, atrocious accusations. I was being tortured by the examining magistrate and by the journalists who invaded my villa and refused to leave it until they had obtained sensational ‘copy’ for their papers. These journalists told me that nobody believed in my story, and that I had better tell a new one. They said my villa was surrounded by a hostile mob, come there to lynch me. It was they who suggested that I should accuse Alexandre Wolff and Remy Couillard. They tortured me until they made me say what they liked. It was no doubt splendid material for their papers: but the result was disastrous for me. Do you know, gentlemen of the jury, that it was actually in a motor car belonging to the _Matin_ that I was driven to the St Lazare prison?” And the “Tragic Widow” collapsed in her chair, covered her face with her hand, sobbed convulsively. At this point the two or three hundred barristers in court murmured compassionately: and M. de Valles called them to order by rapping his paper-cutter on his massive silver inkstand. (M. de Valles, by the way, was for ever rapping his paper-cutter, for ever wiping his brow with a huge handkerchief, for ever sinking back in his handsome, comfortable fauteuil, and then suddenly darting forward to hurl some savage remark at the accused.) Irritated by the compassionate