The work of an examining magistrate in France is conducted with a curious absence of formality. The prisoner or the witnesses come to his room in the Palace of Justice, and in the case of a prisoner the guards withdraw. The magistrate collects his evidence in a very conversational way. He chats with the prisoner and with the witnesses whom he calls, he interrupts them, he bullies them if he thinks fit, he allows them to speak or he reads them a lecture, exactly as he likes, he makes statements, and takes note of contradictions, and he frequently calls three or four witnesses together and allows them to discuss points in the case while he listens to the discussion. This method, I may remark, is often a very fruitful means of getting at the truth. The absence of formality has often proved to be a great help to the course of French justice. The French law and English laws have very different ideas on the subject of evidence. To give an idea of what is considered perfectly relevant and perfectly admissible evidence in France, Madame Caillaux, during the course of her preliminary examination by Monsieur Boucard, the examining magistrate in charge of her case, made the following extraordinary request to him. “I am informed,” she said, “that, in the opinion of the great surgeon Dr. Doyen, the life of Monsieur Calmette might have been saved after I shot him if he had been treated differently.” Madame Caillaux’s contention was that the doctors who attended Monsieur Calmette after she had shot him might have treated him in such a way as to ensure his recovery, and she asked the examining magistrate to call Doctor Doyen, who, after reading the report of the autopsy made by the sworn medical experts after Monsieur Calmette’s death, was of the opinion that the surgeons who attended him might have saved his life. Evidence of an equally irrelevant nature is considered perfectly admissible in any French criminal trial, and evidence as to character and motive very frequently admits in France of an immense abuse of the examining magistrate’s time. In the Caillaux case, for instance, friends of the murdered man have been prolific with evidence to the effect that from their knowledge of Monsieur Calmette they consider it most unlikely that he would ever have printed the letters which play so large a part in the evidence for the defence, and the publication of which Madame Caillaux feared and anticipated.