to seek would prove conclusively that on the morning of the crime
both he and his wife were, rightly or wrongly, convinced that the
_Figaro_ might publish certain letters of a private nature referring
to themselves. An official letter was sent by the examining magistrate
to the Parquet de la Seine, with reference to the course that should
be followed in this matter of Monsieur Poincaré’s evidence, and after
some hesitation as to ways and means of enabling the President of the
Republic to give evidence on oath, Monsieur Forichon, the presiding
judge of the Court of Appeal, was sent to the Elysée, and to him after
swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,
Monsieur Raymond Poincaré described the interview which Monsieur
Caillaux had with him at ten o’clock on the morning of Monday, March
16. We know that on that morning Monsieur Monier, the President of the
Civil Court of the Seine department, called, at her request, on Madame
Caillaux, and was consulted by her as to means and ways of putting a
stop to the campaign against her husband in the _Figaro_. Monsieur
Caillaux had intended to be present at this consultation, but a Cabinet
council had been called at the Elysée at ten o’clock, and he was of
course obliged to attend it. The Ministers were nearly all assembled,
and were chatting with the President of the Republic in a room leading
into the Council Chamber, when, just as the doors of the Council
Chamber were opened and the Ministers passed through, Monsieur Caillaux
asked the President of the Republic for a few moments’ conversation
in private. Monsieur Poincaré, with the unfailing courtesy which
distinguishes him, acquiesced immediately, and allowing the other
Ministers to pass into the Council Chamber, the President of the
Republic remained alone with Monsieur Caillaux in the room they had
left, and closed the door. “I have just learned from a sure source,”
said Monsieur Caillaux to Monsieur Poincaré, “that private letters
written by me to the lady who is now my wife have been handed to the
_Figaro_ and that Gaston Calmette intends publishing them.” “Monsieur
Caillaux was under the stress of great emotion,” said the President of
the Republic in his evidence. “He told me that he feared that Monsieur
Calmette was about to publish in the _Figaro_ private letters, the
divulgation of which would be extremely painful to him and Madame
Caillaux. I replied that I considered Monsieur Calmette an honourable
gentleman (_un galant homme_) altogether incapable of publishing
letters which would bring up Madame Caillaux’s name in the polemics
between them. But my efforts to convince him that this was so were in
vain, and he replied to me that he considered divers articles of the
_Figaro_ were written with the object of preparing (the public mind)
for this publication. I was unable to undeceive Monsieur Caillaux or
to calm him. At one moment he sprang from his seat and exclaimed, ‘If
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