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Picasso became completely desperate: his heart failed him.… He too could only say what the magistrate asked him to say. Besides Guillaume had admitted so many things, true as well as false, that he had totally compromised Picasso.…

It has been said that Picasso denied his friend and pretended not to know him. That is quite untrue. Far from betraying him, that moment brought out the true strength of his friendship with Apollinaire. 61

Fernande, however, knew the story only as she had heard it from Picasso.

It seems significant that after the hearing, Magistrate Drioux allowed Picasso to go home and sent Apollinaire back to the Santé. Rumors spread that Picasso had denied everything, making Apollinaire out to be a liar. Nearly half a century later, Picasso told a journalist a version of the affair:

[Apollinaire] got himself arrested. Naturally, they confronted us. I can see him there now, with his handcuffs and his look of a big placid boy. He smiled at me as I came in, but I made no sign.

When the judge asked me: “Do you know this gentleman?” I was suddenly terribly frightened, and without knowing what I was saying, I answered: “I have never seen this man.”

I saw Guillaume’s expression change. The blood ebbed from his face. I am still ashamed.… 62

vii

After another night in jail, during which he consoled himself by composing poetry, Apollinaire was taken to the court once again. Although this time he would have a lawyer present, he feared that Magistrate Drioux might find him guilty of complicity in the theft. He was held in the Mousetrap, a nickname for the “narrow, stinking cells” where prisoners awaited trial. Then a guard led him, handcuffed, down the corridor to the courtroom. The reporters and photographers pounced. “What a surprise to find myself suddenly stared at like a strange beast! All at once fifty cameras were aimed at me; the magnesium flashes gave a dramatic aspect to this scene in which I was playing a role. I soon recognized a few friends and acquaintances.… I think that I must have laughed and wept at the same time.” 63 It was humiliating for him, nonetheless, to be led through the crowd in handcuffs — and without a tie.

The prosecutors had raised the stakes: Apollinaire was now accused of being not merely an accomplice but the chief of the international gang of criminals who had come to Paris to loot its museums. Magistrate Drioux, however, seemed skeptical and questioned Apollinaire at length about his relationship with Pieret, whom Apollinaire was now calling his “secretary.” Apollinaire admitted allowing Pieret to stay with him in 1911, even though he knew he had stolen before, in 1907, and was even now resuming his career of crime. The judge expressed surprise at this “degree of indulgence.”

“Here is part of my reason,” Apollinaire said. “Pieret is a little bit my creation. He is very queer, very strange, and after studying him I made him the hero of one of the last stories in my L’hérésiarque et Cie. So it would have been a kind of literary ingratitude to let him starve.” 64

Apollinaire’s friends in the courtroom must have held their breath, for no one knew if Magistrate Drioux had a sense of humor or if Apollinaire’s sally might offend him. Opening the dossier that the Sûreté had prepared, Drioux started to read the accusations. Apparently there were some anonymous messages that he found absurd.

“You bought, very recently, it has been alleged,” Drioux said, “a castle in the départment of the Drôme?”

Apollinaire could not resist another humorous reply. “You must be referring to a castle in Spain,” he told the magistrate. “I have seen many of those evaporate.”

“I have a letter here,” Drioux continued, apparently falling into the spirit of Apollinaire’s testimony, “from someone who says you borrowed two books from him, and that one of them… you never returned.”

“I imagine his reason for lending them to me was that I might read them,” said Apollinaire. “I haven’t read them yet. I will return them to him as soon as I can.