_Question._ "What was that cottonwool which on May 31st was found on the floor in the room where you were in bed?"
_Answer._ "I don't know.... I saw no cottonwool that morning. I only saw many people around me. In any case, there was no cottonwool in my room when I went to bed...."
_In reply to a Question._ "On the evening of May 30th, I don't remember who served out the soup, whether it was Couillard or myself.... Usually it was Couillard who did so."
_Question._ "In his report, Dr. Balthazard (the Home Office medical expert) has demonstrated that the gag was taken from the sheet of cottonwool which was found near the mantelpiece, in the room where you spent the night!"
_Answer._ "I have nothing to say on that point. It was only long after the drama that I was told that some cottonwool had been found in the room."
_Question._ "Dr. Balthazard further demonstrated by 'physical' and chemical processes, that the gag could not have been in your mouth not even for a few seconds, for it contained no traces of saliva!"
_Answer._ "Then the gag which Dr. Balthazard examined was not the one which had been so long in my mouth."
(Quoted from _Dossier_, Cotes 3308-3310.)
(And here I would quote a passage from the speech made by my counsel, Maître Antony Aubin, at my trial):
"In order to demonstrate that Mme. Steinheil was never gagged at all and that she lies, this is the argument used: There never was in Mme. Steinheil's room but one piece of cottonwool that might have been a gag, the piece that was on the pillow, on the right side of it. Now this gag was at once put under seal, on the spot, without any possible mistake. Handed later on to Dr. Balthazard, he found that it had never been wetted with saliva; therefore, the 'gag' on the pillow had never been in Mme. Steinheil's mouth.
"But an important question now arises. How many pieces of cottonwool were placed under seal, on the Sunday morning (May 31st)? Four. There was cottonwool everywhere, so much so that some one present remarked: 'One seems to walk on cottonwool.'
"Seal number one containing the gag '_which the criminals forced into Mme. Steinheil's mouth_,' for those were the words written on the label attached to it--was put together without it being known by whom it (the gag) was picked up, who handed it to the Police Commissary, without its identity being ascertained if only by a question asked of Mme. Steinheil. No precaution was taken, there was no supervision--so that it is impossible to say whether the piece of cottonwool, placed under the seal, as '_having been forced into Mme. Steinheil's mouth_,' is really the one which had been seen on her pillow, and which she herself pointed out.