On the last day of the show I spoke my mind to M. de Balincourt. And I never saw him again, except at my trial, where he gave evidence.
In April I made the acquaintance of M. Bdl.... through a common friend, the Director of the Paris Mont de Piété. Mr. Bdl. was a widower with several children, and although his residence was in the Ardennes, he frequently came to Paris. We met at a time when I was greatly depressed, and also vaguely alarmed. I felt myself surrounded by invisible dangers, and life had become almost unbearable. M. Bdl. was a strong, straightforward, very intelligent and very refined man. He had a great regard for me, and we became intimate friends. Afterwards, however, he showed himself to be so violent and domineering that our acquaintance came very soon to an end, although we parted in the best of terms, and occasionally wrote to each other. I should not even have mentioned this episode of my life, if it were not that M. Bdl. played a relatively important part in that long and complex drama called the "Steinheil Affair," on account of certain declarations which I am supposed to have made on the so-called "night of the confession" (November 26th, 1908), a "confession" which was greatly responsible for my arrest.
On May 18th, I went to Bellevue, to settle down there, as I did every spring. My mother, who was at Beaucourt, wrote saying that she would come to Paris. I no longer have that letter, but the letter which I sent to my mother in reply was found, and is here reproduced. Its importance will not escape the reader, after I state that I was accused of having enticed my mother to my house in Paris in order to murder her together with my husband! As for the reason which it was supposed had led me to murder my mother it was as follows: If I killed my husband only, I might be suspected of the crime, for I was not on very good terms with him, and probably I wished to be free to marry some wealthy and more congenial man. But, if I also killed my mother, then (according to the logic with which the prosecution kindly credited me), I should not be suspected, for people would say: she might have murdered her husband, but she would never have murdered her mother. Therefore, since both were murdered, she cannot be guilty.