A French criminal trial is in every respect as unlike a criminal trial in England as can well be imagined. To begin with, if the Caillaux drama had been English, if the wife of an English Cabinet Minister were at the present moment in Brixton gaol awaiting her trial because she had walked into Printing House Square and shot the editor of the _Times_, this book, by the mere fact of its appearance, would send me and the publisher to prison for contempt of court. In France, not only is there no contempt of court in comment on a case sub judice, but the preliminaries of a great criminal trial are conducted in the open. Ever since the murder of Monsieur Gaston Calmette the Paris papers have contained long daily digests of the evidence collected on the details of the murder, and this evidence has been commented on every day, and with the utmost freedom, by the Paris newspapers. There is a special magistrate known as the _juge d’instruction_, whose duty it is, if I may put it so, to try the case before it comes into court, and to hand to the judge who presides over the trial his opinion on the prisoner’s innocence or guilt, his full reasons for that opinion, and the evidence in résumé which he has collected to enable him to form it. In other words, directly a crime has been committed, whether the supposed criminal be arrested or not, a _juge d’instruction_ or examining magistrate is appointed, and from the moment of his appointment he takes entire charge of the case. The prisoner is entirely in his hands. That is to say, he disposes of her while she is awaiting trial, under certain rules and regulations of course, as he thinks fit. He may question her as often or as seldom as he wishes, either in his room at the Palace of Justice or in her cell, the only proviso being that he is not allowed to question her without the presence of her lawyer, and that at each interrogatory his sworn clerk, known as the _greffier_, must be present to take down his questions, and the prisoner’s answers, and at the end of each interrogatory to obtain the prisoner’s signature at their foot. The examining magistrate’s work is of course by no means confined to his examination of the prisoner. As soon as he has digested the first details and circumstances of the crime he has full power to summon and to examine anybody and everybody whom he considers likely to have any evidence to give which may help him in his judgment on the case.