His first wife was Madame Gueydan, who was the divorced wife of a Monsieur Jules Dupré. Monsieur Caillaux married her in 1906. Monsieur Caillaux and his first wife did not live very happily, and their relations became more than strained in July 1909, after the fall of the Clemenceau Cabinet, in which Monsieur Caillaux was Minister of Finance. In September of that year Monsieur Caillaux and his wife were at Mamers. One night, Monsieur Caillaux declared to the examining magistrate, a packet of letters disappeared from a drawer in his writing-table. Two of these letters were letters written by Monsieur Caillaux to Madame Léo Claretie (_née_ Raynouard). Madame Claretie was at that time (September 1909) already divorced from her husband. As we know, she became Monsieur Caillaux’s wife in 1911. These two letters, which disappeared from Monsieur Caillaux’s writing-table are the two letters to which reference is made at the end of the last chapter, letters which Monsieur and Madame Caillaux believed to be in the possession of Monsieur Calmette. The letters were of a most intimate character. One, a very short one, was written on letter paper with the heading of the Conseil Général de la Sarthe. The second, written on paper of the Chamber of Deputies, was a long sixteen-page letter containing, Monsieur Caillaux said, the story for the last few years of all the intimacies of his life. “In this letter,” Monsieur Caillaux said, “I told my future wife, at length, of the reasons, many of which were based on political grounds, which prevented me from freeing myself immediately from my wife (Madame Gueydan) and from marrying her.” Monsieur Caillaux was much upset at the discovery that Madame Gueydan-Caillaux had possession of these letters, and for their restitution he offered his wife either a complete reconciliation or a divorce. Madame Gueydan-Caillaux accepted the reconciliation with her husband, and on November 5, 1909, the parties met in the presence of Monsieur Privat-Deschanel, the secretary of the Ministry of Finance, and an intimate friend of Monsieur Caillaux’s, at Monsieur Caillaux’s house, 12 Rue Pierre Charron. In Monsieur Privat-Deschanel’s presence the letters were solemnly burned, together with others bearing on the disagreement between husband and wife. Before they were burned Madame Gueydan-Caillaux gave her word of honour to her husband and to Monsieur Privat-Deschanel that she had kept no photograph and no copy of the letters. Their destruction was followed by a complete reconciliation. Monsieur Caillaux declared that as far as he was concerned the reconciliation was sincere, that he gave up all thought of Madame Raynouard-Claretie, his present wife, and he asked Monsieur Boucard to call on Monsieur Privat-Deschanel to bear witness to this. Some months later Monsieur Caillaux found, he says, that it was quite impossible for him to remain friends with his wife, and at the beginning of July 1910 he instituted divorce proceedings.