The "foreigner" was probably a professional blackmailer, and when he found that nothing more was to be done with the pearls and that his livelihood from that source was gone, sought to turn to his advantage the knowledge which he had gained from my husband (always too ready to give his confidence to any one who posed as his friend) of Félix Faure's documents.
I earnestly hope that some day the mystery will be solved. My theory may then be found wanting in certain particulars, but I believe that, on the whole, it will seem, to the reader, the most plausible.
M. Émile Loubet, President of the Senate, followed Félix Faure as President of the Republic on February 18th, 1899. As every one knows, stones were showered upon the new President as he passed on his way from Versailles, where the "Congress" had elected him, to the station where he entrained for Paris. He was called "Panama the First"--though he had had nothing to do with the Panama frauds--insulted and besmirched as few men have been. I was only a few yards from M. Loubet at the Auteuil Steeplechase Meeting (June), when young Baron Christiani smashed the top hat of the President and almost hit with his stick the wife of the Italian Ambassador, Countess Tornielli. But M. Loubet never flinched, and he weathered the storm till it abated. Some have called this cowardice; I would rather call it heroism--of a kind.
Besides the highly important and final developments in the Dreyfus affair--which have been summed up in another chapter--and its truly amazing epilogue, that is, the complete and rapid way in which France recovered from the terrible crisis and emerged serene and vigorous, there happened little worth referring to during the year 1899. There were, however, a few amazing interludes. The poet Déroulède seized the bridle of the horse of General Roget, a staunch Anti-Dreyfusard, on the day of President Faure's funeral, and ordered him to march with his troops on to the Elysée--another _coup_ that failed. Déroulède was arrested, but the Court of Assize acquitted him on May 31st. There were many comical conspiracies and many comical trials of conspirators; there were constant riots in Paris and elsewhere, all more noisy than alarming; there were thousands of Socialists with red button-holes in search of Royalists with white button-holes... and they never met. And there was the farce of the "Fort" Chabrol (a house in the Rue Chabrol, where the Anti-Semitic League had offices), which garrisoned by Jules Guérin, the secretary of the League, and a few friends, held five thousand soldiers at bay for nearly two months. Guérin and other heroes of the fort, and also Déroulède, were tried by the Senate transformed into "High Court," and were sentenced to ten years' banishment....