The Beast Within - Emile Zola [216]
‘Come, come, Roubaud,’ he said, ‘please don’t treat us like children ... Are you really asking us to believe that you were jealous and that you murdered in a fit of jealousy?’
‘Most certainly,’ Roubaud answered.
‘If we are to accept your story, you married your wife without knowing anything about her relationship with the President ... Is this likely? In your case everything would seem to suggest that, on the contrary, the arrangement had all been planned, discussed and agreed upon. You walk into marriage with a young girl who has been brought up like a lady. She receives a dowry. Her protector becomes yours as well. You are fully aware that she has been left a house in the country in his will. And you try to tell us that you knew nothing, absolutely nothing! Really! I put it to you that you knew everything. There is no other way that your marriage can be explained. What is more, your story is belied by one very obvious fact. You are not a jealous husband, and it is no use trying to claim that you are.’
‘I am telling you the truth. I killed in a fit of jealous rage.’
‘Please explain to me then how, having murdered the President because of some unspecified relationship in the past, for which, incidentally, you have no proof, you managed to turn a blind eye to the fact that your wife took a lover, this Jacques Lantier, an affair about which there can be no doubt whatever. A number of witnesses have mentioned it and you yourself have told me that you knew of it. And yet you left them free to see each other as they chose. Why?’
Roubaud sat slumped in his chair, gazing into the distance with a confused look in his eyes. He could find no explanation.
‘I don’t know,’ he finally mumbled. ‘I killed Grandmorin, but I didn’t kill my wife.’
‘Then stop trying to tell me that you were a jealous husband seeking revenge. I advise you not to repeat such fictions to the gentlemen of the jury; they would simply laugh at you. Believe me, you will have to change your tune. Only the truth can save you.’
But from then on, the more Roubaud insisted that he was indeed telling the truth, the more he was accused of lying. Everything seemed to turn against him; even the earlier statements he had made at the first inquiry, which should have corroborated his present account,3 since he had then informed against Cabuche, were used on the contrary as evidence of a cunning plan that the two had hatched between them. Monsieur Denizet probed the psychology that lay behind the whole affair with true professional zeal. Never before, he said, had he delved deeper into human nature. It had been more a matter of divining the truth than of simply ascertaining the facts; he prided himself on being one of those judges who can read a criminal’s mind, lead him where he wants and then demolish him with a single glance. Besides, there was now no shortage of evidence; the case was overwhelming. The inquiry had established a solid basis for prosecution; the truth shone forth with dazzling certainty, like light from the sun.
What further enhanced the merit of Monsieur Denizet’s achievement was that, without anyone knowing a thing about it, he had carefully pieced things together and had brought the two cases together as one. Following the resounding success of the plebiscite, the country had been in a constant state of hysteria, displaying all those symptoms of frenzy that portend some great disaster. As the Empire drew to a close, society, politics and especially the press were infused with a sense of unease