“So you tortured Madame Steinheil in her drawing-room. You drank her tea. You were her guests, she was your hostess,” interrupted M. de Valles, scathingly, indignantly. The “Tragic Widow,” leaning forward on the ledge of the dock, looked gratefully, thankfully, at the judge. The three Yellow Reporters strode out of court, each of them provoking angry exclamations from the barristers as they importantly passed by. And then, the cook—Mariette Wolff, who had been in Madame Steinheil’s service for over twenty years; and who, according to the Yellow Press, “possessed all the secrets of the palpitating Steinheil Mystery.” Henri Rochefort, M. Arthur Meyer (director of the _Gaulois_, very Jewish in appearance, but a strong Anti-Semite and an ardent Catholic in politics), Madame Séverine (the famous woman journalist), four very charming lady barristers, all their male confrères—everyone, in fact, sprang up excitedly when Mariette made her long-expected appearance. She has since been described as a peasant out of one of Zola’s novels, and as “the double of Balzac’s fiendish Cousine Bette.” She has also been termed “a fury,” and “a rat” and “a monster.” For my part, when first I saw her through the open door of the witness-room, sipping a steaming grog and chatting and laughing with her son Alexandre, I summed her up as the French double of a typical English charwoman. She was wearing a battered black bonnet and a seedy black dress, and came to me more as a Dickensonian than a Zolaesque or a Balzacien character. But Mariette, happily drinking grog, and Mariette, facing a jury and judge, are two very different persons. In court, Madame Steinheil’s ex-cook was defiant, vindictive, violent. As she defended her former mistress, her beady, black eyes flashed, her chin and nose almost met—her yellow, knotted hand beat the air. Yes, she was a “fury”; yes—to use the French journalist’s pet epithet—she looked “sinister.” And, oh dear me, her abuse of the Yellow Reporters! Mariette’s crude language cannot be reproduced here. It became particularly strong when she related how she had ordered MM. Hutin, Barby and Labruyère out of the Impasse Ronsin Villa. It grew even stronger when she denied their allegations that she intended first of all to asphyxiate herself, and then to blow out her brains. She denied everything. “My mistress is innocent,” she cried. “She accused my son Alexandre of being a murderer, but it was those —— journalists who made her do that, and I forgive her: and so does Alexandre.” True, Alexandre Wolff, a horse-dealer’s assistant, with huge red hands and a neck like a bullock’s, told M. de Valles he bore Madame Steinheil “no grudge.” And the “Tragic Widow,” leaning forward, murmured melodiously: “Thank you, Alexandre.”