Beyond Revanche, page 8
There was no proffered hand.
“And before we begin, this meeting never took place. You understand? No one must know about it. Ever.”
What followed stunned, frightened, and excited me in like measure. Here I was in a select meeting of the inner core of A.F., as an equal. A “strong man.” Sufficiently important that they had to keep me from the clutches of the police. I could not fathom why the gendarmerie might throw me in prison, but then I had lost faith in law and order in Paris. Every right-thinking person had.
“Who constitutes the greatest danger to our nation?”
“Caillaux and his associates?” I anticipated that his would be the approved response. I was wrong. Slowly stirring a single silver spoon into his coffee, Charles smiled at my ignorance. I reckon he had counted on it.
“No, my friend, not Caillaux. His power was effectively snuffed out when his brute of a wife gunned down Gaston Calmette, may he rest in peace.” Charles blessed himself and the others followed. Ah, we were all Catholics. Fine.
“The enemies of France, the enemies of our people, are the peddlers of peace and conciliation.” He leaned forward as if someone close by might be eavesdropping. “On pain of death, you will never repeat what I am about to tell you.” Charles’s voice became gravely guttural. This was more than a mere whiff of conspiracy.
“Of course, you may depend on me.”
“I need to be certain of that. We all do.” If there was some underlying threat, it was unnecessary.
“I would give my life for France,” I promised.
“May it not come to that, but we will all face sacrifice in the near future.” Charles cleared his throat, adopted a stiff-backed position, and drummed his fingers on the table as if buying time to make a final decision. He inhaled a long slow breath before choosing to continue.
“We will be at war with Germany within the month. Possibly sooner. France is prepared. Presidential directives have been drawn up. The army is ready. General Joffre is straining at the leash.”
“But the president is in Russia?” Instinctively, I knew I was wrong.
“President Poincaré is currently en route from St. Petersburg. He and Prime Minister Viviani will be at their desks by Wednesday at the latest. The directives were prepared long before they went to visit the czar.”
My jaw dropped involuntarily.
“So why?”
“Poincaré knows that now is the time to strike back at the Boches. This is our one chance to regain the stolen provinces, if the czar fulfills his treaty obligations. Have no doubts that is why the president is dedicating such precious time to this visit. We can catch Germany in a pincher movement, and crush her from the East and West. Raymond Poincaré went to reassure Russia that all was ready. And the czar has been reassured.”
The immensity of this statement swept through me. Adrenaline pumped surprise and delight into my veins. It was to be. And soon.
“Our problem lies with the internationalists; the syndicalists, the rabble intellectuals who would call a halt to action across Europe. Jaurès here in Paris, that damned Polish Jewess, Rosa Luxembourg, the bastard Kier Hardie in England. If we let them rally their pathetic workers, organise mass meetings and general strikes, demand that armies lay down their weapons, it will be disastrous. They will have to be eliminated, one way or another.”
He paused for effect. I nodded in obvious approval as if to infer that I fully understood what he was saying.
“Action française cannot stand back. We must be ready. It is a point of honor.”
The discussion did not end there, but my mind teemed with possibilities. Here, I was a hero. Here, I had friends and colleagues. Like minds who respected me. I was a soldier for Action française. And they wanted me.
6
July 27-28, 1914 – Verdicts
Over the weekend, a few newspapers ran stories of trouble in Europe. Distant trouble. Stupidity, really. The Austrian Archduke and his wife had been assassinated a month back, and hints began to emerge about Serbian complicity. Serbians? Who cared about those murdering peasants? The Austrian government demanded that while Serbia investigated what happened they should allow Austrian investigators access to the inquiry. Naturally, all of Europe appeared to have immense sympathy for the Archduke’s family. Austria could hardly let such a blatant murder rest unresolved.
President Poincaré heard of the tragedy while he was at the races at Longchamp in the Bois de Boulogne. Everyone who mattered in Paris society was there for the annual Grand Prix festival of French excesses. Nobility, diplomats, millionaires, politicians of power, and those who had temporarily lost it, displayed their elegance amongst the vibrant June flowers and Longchamp’s iconic old windmill. The latest daring fashions flaunted by the mannequins caused muttered comment from the more restrained ladies of wealth. Their black and white satin and lace ensembles with dazzling pearls were themselves a statement. Dead-black was fashionable. Henriette Caillaux had not been forgotten.
The president was informed of the Sarajevo slaying at a suitable junction between the third and fourth courses of his splendid dinner. He did not leave the table. It was sad news indeed, but the Grand Prix had been exhilarating. In crowded stands which boasted Prince Kinsky, the Raja of Puddikkottai, a host of English Lords, eminent French Barons, and the multi-millionaire arms procurer Basil Zaharoff, the magnificent chase from the turn of the home straight to the winning line between two Rothschild three-year-olds had been breathless. Baron Edmund de Rothschild’s Sardanapale edged ahead of his cousin Maurice de Rothschild’s entrant, La Farina, by barely a neck. Who would want to leave a garden party more sumptuous than that at Eden?
One calendar month later, the trial of Henriette Caillaux ended. Bernard Roux fretted. His thoughts strayed beyond the city limits; beyond the borders of France and Germany towards darker regions in the Balkans where an earthquake threatened to split Europe’s fragile peace. Demands from Austria for an acknowledgement from Serbia that the wrongdoing had to be avenged threatened an escalation into a full-blown storm which would involve Russia, Germany, England, and the Balkans. What had started as a requiem for the Archduke Ferdinand was rapidly descending into the Dies Ira of Europe’s Armageddon. Bernard Roux summoned his Tigers to meet at the Café de Deux Ponts for breakfast. They had to know what lay ahead.
Guy Simon bounded along the quayside. “This is a nice change for us office boys, Commander. Are we here to celebrate Madame Caillaux’s death sentence?”
Roux raised his eyebrows. “Perhaps,” was his laconic response. Mathieu had asked him to consider sharing his secret with everyone on the team. Whispers had begun to leak through government departments that France was gearing up for war. He had almost blurted out the truth twice. Once in the Café Clichy and once in the office. Pascal Girard and Paul Dubois arrived in tandem. “Well, here’s a first. Breakfast paid by the commander. Celebrations, then?”
Bernard Roux rose to greet them formally, dispelling the air of jocularity. His handshake was firm, his face, firmer. “Gentlemen.” His chill soured the frivolity.
Mathieu waited and watched from the other side of the street before crossing to join them. He brought his own gravitas to the table and chose not to join in the usual banter. Coffee was served and the Tigers smelled bad news. “What’s wrong? Have we messed up?” Pascal Girard sensed trouble.
The commander looked at this men with unexpected sadness. “I don’t know if it will come as a complete surprise…” he drew on a sympathetic Gauloises, “but, unless something dramatic intervenes, by this time next week we are likely to be at war.”
Guy tried to soften the moment. He smiled, relaxed and positive. “Do you really think so, Sir? Someone in the Quai d’Orsay starts a rumor and before you know it…”
Roux turned eyes of stone towards Guy Simon and petrified them all. “I’ve seen the order for general mobilization. That is the final step before a declaration of war. You are aware of that.” Each found a different level of gasp. Guy’s had a short intake. Pascal’s included a low moan. Paul Dubois broke wind softly. “Mathieu and I have used the time wasted on this charade of a trial to follow what is really happening. President Poincaré and his diehards have set everything in motion.”
“No. We would know. We would all know.” Pascal Girard was not having it. He was six weeks from retirement. War was not on his mind. Mathieu knew that it was, however, on the president’s agenda, and also the czar’s. The English? They were certainly involved, but everyone knew the English. They said one thing and did the other. The coffee sat untouched. Mathieu watched their reactions carefully.
The commander continued. “You’ve read about the Austrian demands to Serbia and all the commotion which is now going on. What you don’t know is that the Serbian reply to the Austrians was written here in Paris in the political division at Quai d’Orsay and circulated for approval to the other countries involved in the plans. This whole mess is being orchestrated through Paris, St. Petersburg, and London. They want the Balkans to explode so that they have the excuse they need for war.”
Mathieu underlined the facts. “Benoit Durfort, that two-faced slimy bastard of a diplomatic nonentity, takes great pride in detailing the duplicity which is behind all this.”
Pascal Girard was immediately agitated. He knew Durfort. Paul Dubois’s reaction was solemn. What he heard confirmed his every fear. “London? So the English are involved, too? This is bad news, Sir.”
Guy Simon caught their attention by spreading his arms across the table as if it were an altar.
“Coffee anyone?” Mathieu had expected him to be taken aback, but Guy was perfectly calm. They ate their breakfast in silent thought, each wondering what it meant for their future.
The commander took one sip of his bitter coffee and fixed his attention on a low-flying swallow winging across the shallow river. Its slick blue-black form swooped and dived in balletic turns, oblivious to the poisonous war that man was concocting.
“Once the newspapers have had their fill of the Caillaux verdict, the coming war will be all-consuming. You know what it’s like. War is popular until you start to lose.” Roux’s pessimism was tangible. He was consumed by a horrific deja vu. He rose to go to the Palais de Justice, a croissant in hand in case hunger pangs descended later.
Ever the optimist, Guy insisted, “But if we have England and Russia on our side, the Germans will be crushed.”
“That’s what they reckon,” was the best Mathieu could offer.
“You need to know, gentlemen, because one way or another we will have our hands full. I don’t need to remind you all. Not a word.”
The partisan crowds outside the great courtyard bayed at each other in mutual contempt. Inside the legal teams rehearsed their parting shots for the benefit of a jury that had already made up its mind. The prosecution case maintained that Henriette had deliberately, and with premeditation, murdered Gaston Calmette because she and he agreed that without a bullet to his heart, Calmette would ruin Joseph Caillaux’s career. He could have done the deed, but she knew that she had a better chance of being found not guilty. Because she was a woman. The prosecution counsel played the Catholic card by pronouncing her a moral degenerate for whom marriage meant nothing sacred.
Not so, claimed the defense, brilliantly and dramatically led by Maitre Labori. In a different era he would have been a peerless director of stage or screen. Henriette collapsed into her husband’s loving arms as arranged and reacted on cue, better than anyone might have anticipated. Labori produced a report from the Paris faculty of medicine which implied that Henriette was governed by subconscious impulses which demonstrated a split personality. It was, he instructed the jury, a female weakness. She had killed out of a feminine drive to preserve her sexual reputation. If the jury at that point swiveled on the cusp of either argument, Labori added a telling plea. He reached beyond the court and begged the jury, and all Frenchmen for whom the tricolor was sacred, to preserve their anger for those enemies who had appeared at the borders to threaten the very survival of the Gallic way of life. Brilliant. Utterly masterful. Maitre Labori earned every franc of his fabled fee.
The jury retired from the claustrophobic chamber at five minutes to eight in the evening. Word spread across the city like a dust storm in Algeria. It was on everyone’s lips. Hot and acrid opinion divided Paris. All other rumors were buried in the shifting sands of ill-informed prediction.
Unable to resist the will to be part of the dramatic cast, the jury of citizen magistrates returned to the stage after twenty-five minutes. They sought clarification on points of legal consequence. What length of sentence would Madame Caillaux receive on the two counts brought before the court? Suitably reassured, they retired again. Half an hour later they were back. This time it was to declare their decision. Months of bitter accusation and counter accusation came to an end within one judicial hour. Hundreds of thousands of reams of newsprint had been churned out detailing every possible angle for the better part of four months. Duels had been fought over the case that very morning. Injured parties would take much longer to heal, yet the jury had decided in less than sixty minutes.
Commander Bernard Roux stood impassive, certain of but one fact. Whoever lost would cause a riot. Judge Albanel bowed to the court and addressed the foreman of the jury. “ Is Madame Caillaux guilty of voluntary homicide against Gaston Calmette on 16 March?”
“Of course she was,” Mathieu murmured to himself.
The foreman differed. “Before God and before all men, the decision of the jury is NO.”
“What?” Mutterings of anger and anguish turned to a growl as the second, by that time utterly superfluous, question was put.
“Was the said homicide committed with premeditation and criminal intent?”
“No.”
Commander Roux watched Judge Albanel smile to himself before attempting a closing gesture. A roar erupted from the body of the hall as if two tribes gave simultaneous vent to their deepest war cry. Joy or anger boomed from every quarter in a cannonade of disbelief. Journalists raced each other for the exits, pushing, pulling, threatening violence, and throwing inconsequential blows and insults at each other. Mathieu and Bernard Roux stepped into the well of the court to add weight to the police presence, ready to hold back angry protestors, but the disbelieving horde turned and raced outside to bay their outrage over Notre Dame, the Sacré Coeur , and Eiffel’s tower, to a waiting world like wounded wolves gathering their clan.
So ended the one woman show which had held Paris in thrall while all across Europe the bankers and arms dealers, the empire grabbers and warmongers aligned their forces with political and military expediency. Henriette Caillaux enjoyed one week on center stage while behind the scenes the legions of the damned gathered in the wings for years of retribution.
Raoul’s Story
The Wrath of Injustice
I was incensed. Beyond words.
I tried to punch a gendarme who had started to shut the gilded gates fronting the Palais d’Injustice. Granted, there were at least four others in advance of my useless swipe into the ether of corruption which surrounded the trial, but I swear that no one was more outraged than me. No one.
More than the constant bullying at school, more than my father’s barely disguised condescension, more than my brother’s contempt, the Caillaux verdict crushed what remained of my confidence that all would come right in the end. Chants of “Ass-ass-in, ass-ass-in” rent the Parisian twilight. Clenched fists pumped the air like traction engines warming to their task. The roar was manic. A surge of power thrust me forward. Crushed against the courtyard gate I was trapped between burning anger and blind indignation, hardly able to breathe. My head spun. Not guilty? Not guilty of voluntary homicide? Not guilty of premeditated criminal intent? Logic was affronted. It was a nightmare, surely?
It was impossible. Henriette Caillaux bought a gun with the sole intention of killing Gaston Calmette, waited on her prey like a weathered predator, and struck down an unarmed man. She planned it. She chose to murder in cold blood. The police arrested her with the weapon. She never denied her action. Yet from a jury of twelve citizens, all male, all reputedly sane, eleven declared her NOT GUILTY. France was a laughing stock. How they must have sniggered in Berlin at the stupidity of Parisian justice. No wonder they considered us soft and flimsy, spineless and gullible. The patronizing English were delighted at yet another example of French farce. For Palais de Justice, read that obnoxious theatre, the Palais Royal.
My anger boiled in the Lake of Fire. I was incandescent. Burning with emotional rage. My being was filled with an inner certainty. Have you seen the holy pictures that they sell outside Catholic churches to the Faithful? Paul of Tarsus falling from his horse, struck down by a shaft of all-consuming revelation, reborn as a messenger to spread the word of God? He was gifted inner certainty. Or any of the glorious martyrs who were burned at the stake, their fate decided, glowing with the certainty of everlasting life after the horrific death before them? Halos alight? Now I knew. I would become the true avenging angel. I would wield the heavy sword of justice. Because I knew what injustice was. I would be a martyr for France.
Tears ran freely. I remembered how in my childhood father had unaccountably beaten both my brother and I, for allegedly laughing during mass. We were taken into the study and thrashed. Me first. With every stinging stroke I screamed my innocence.
“It wasn’t me, it wasn’t me, Papa. I don’t even know Pierre Monette!”
“It was him,” I cried, desperately pointing to my stone-faced brother in the hope that the beating would stop. But there was no justice. “They made a joke about Claudine Therbault’s breasts resting on the pew. I couldn’t help looking.”
The smacks increased in intensity. “Im-pure-thoughts-in-church.” With each syllable father’s wrath found fresh expression. It hurt. Deeply. Such undeserved pain.
