The detectives left the house at the end of the afternoon. The journalists were at liberty to come in now, and they did come in! Fifty or sixty of them. They scampered in like wild beasts! They asked questions of every one in the house. Even those I had thought ponderous and dignified lost all control of themselves.... A shower of questions rained upon me. "Write anything you please," I said wearily, "but do leave me alone, I must sleep, I must forget all this...." I locked myself up in a room and snatched an hour's sleep, and it was Marthe's turn to watch over her mother....
A noise like the voice of an angry sea roused me. I went to the garden gate, and through the small wicket I saw a great crowd of men and women--women especially--who howled fearfully. Marthe held my hand and trembled. "Mother, mother, what is it?" she kept asking. A sedate English--or American--journalist, who was with us at the time, said, "Don't pay any attention, Madame. Leave this gate. Some side with you, but others loathe you--and neither the one nor the other knows why." And he added in a murmur, "The great enemy of reason, the Multitude...." Words spoken at a dramatic moment often engrave themselves on the mind, and that last sentence often came back to me. I have since found that the journalist was quoting Sir Thomas Brown.
Mme. Chabrier, who had gone out early in the afternoon, had the greatest difficulty in reaching the house, and so had the messengers and the postman, who brought shoals of letters which I read more eagerly than before.... At last, late in the evening, policemen cleared the Impasse Ronsin and the storm died away. We sat down to dinner, Marthe and I, but couldn't eat....
In the middle of the night--it must have been 1.30 A.M.--the door-bell rang persistently. I rose, and dressed hastily, Mariette was already at the gate. "Who is it?" I cried; "what is it?" There were half a dozen journalists outside, who wanted to know if it were true that I had committed suicide! Mariette shouted, "No, of course not! Go away!" and banged the wicket to. That night again I was unable to sleep. I thought that I could not live through another day such as I had just passed, another night such as was now slowly dragging away. I was convinced that I had reached the limit of human endurance, but events were to prove to me, very soon--within the next twenty-four hours in fact!--that I was wrong. My calvary had only begun.... There is perhaps no limit to the human capacity for suffering, physically and mentally.