Several days later, in the evening, and escorted by two police officers, Charles left the Mazas prison on a special pass. Ferdinand de Lesseps had been demanding to see his son, whom he accused of abandoning him. His anxiety was such that his doctor had become extremely concerned.
Charles, his wife, and the two policemen arrived at the little railroad station nearest La Chesnaye well after midnight. A carriage was waiting and they drove another fifteen miles through the dark countryside, arriving at the chateau around three in the morning. At first light Charles went in to see his father.
He found the old man awake but still in bed. On the bedside table were a number of Paris papers, all of them a year or more out of date.
“Good morning, Father. I have been able to leave my work and here I am.”
“Ah, Charles,” the old man responded. “Is there nothing new in Paris?” Then he kissed his son, repeating simply, “Ah, Charles! Ah, Charles!”
When the family gathered for lunch in the huge dining room with its great, carved seventeenth-century buffets, Ferdinand de Lesseps entered slowly with a cane and took his customary place at the head of the table. No one explained to him who the policeman was sitting beside Charles, and he never asked. Once he smiled at his son and seemed about to say something.
In the afternoon Charles and the family and the two policemen took a long walk; then, after dark, the prisoner was returned to Paris. Charles was a different man after that. It would be said that his manner during the first trial had been carefully contrived, the strategy being that discretion, even silence on certain matters, would be rewarded with a light sentence. There may be some truth to the interpretation. However, it does not seem quite in character. More likely the months in prison, the personal humiliation of the trial, and the visit to La Chesnaye had been a momentous inward journey from which he had returned with a profoundly different view of himself and his responsibilities.
His deportment during the second trial was still that of the perfect gentleman, only now there was an unmistakable edge of outrage; that and the utter composure–even ease–of a man with little more to lose, with no one left to protect, who has decided quite literally to have his day in court.
Again the setting was the Palais de Justice, but now in the larger Court of Assizes and before a jury. Charles and Fontane were charged with distributing bribes; Baihaut, Sans-Leroy, three relatively unknown deputies, one inconsequential senator, and a go-between named Blondin, a former employee of the Credit Lyonnais, were charged with accepting them. Charges against those more celebrated figures implicated thus far–Floquet, de Freycinet, Senators Grevy and Renault, various deputies of note–had all been dropped for lack of evidence. So the important politicians were not to be tried. Nor was Ferdinand de Lesseps.
The payoff artist Arton was another absent party and a dreadful embarrassment to the police, for in recent weeks Arton had led two Paris detectives, one an aide to the head of the Surete, on a wild chase across half of Europe, from Budapest to Bucharest to Jassy to Nuremberg to Prague to Magdeburg to Hannover, then back to Budapest, where the detectives lost the trail. Where he was now nobody could say.
Cornelius Herz had also been added to the list of accused this time. But he was sequestered in a small seaside hotel at Bournemouth, England, refusing to return to Paris on the grounds that he, like the elder de Lesseps, was too ill to travel. Nor did there appear to be much that could be done. To secure total privacy, Herz had rented the entire hotel (no great problem at that season of the year). Two men from Scotland Yard sent to arrest him on an extradition warrant affirmed that he was indeed an extremely sick man. He was placed under house arrest until several eminent London physicians, including the queen’s own Dr. Russell Reynolds, could be dispatched to Bournemouth to give an opinion. To a man, they certified the gravity of Herz’s condition.
But what if Herz was putting on an act? What if, in fact, he was an agent for the Foreign Office, as had been charged, and so the whole thing was an act?
Paris was filled with such conjecture, and the same questions come readily enough to mind even now. But if it was an act, then Herz must have been something of a theatrical genius or the new government of Premier Alexandre Ribot must have been in on it as well; for a succession of French physicians came next to Bournemouth at the invitation of the Foreign Office and they too reported the patient to be in a ghastly state, and mentally as well as physically.
So Herz, still under arrest, remained in his suite overlooking the English sea. No one could see him, no one could get him to divulge a word–not until Emily Crawford appeared and talked her way through the guarded front door and up to Herz’s bedroom. The inter-view was the only one Herz was ever to permit and it raised questions concerning the Panama Affair that never were to be answered.
Herz, she reported, was suffering from Bright’s disease (an acute inflammation of the kidneys), complicated by an unnamed “malady of the nervous system.” He would never come out of the hotel alive she prophesied.
She found him in bed, propped up with pillows and covered with furs and blankets. She was shocked by the change in him, but “the light hazel eye had lost none of its electrical brilliance . . . The clearness and vigor with which he expressed himself was amazing.”
He told her that de Reinach had been involved in a vast European intrigue, the object of which was a “readjustment” of the alliances that then bound the central powers and to “fill the pockets” of a syndicate of politicians who were working under the direction of de Reinach.
They were to have divided among themselves a tremendously big sum which was to have been obtained as a commission on a state loan issued in Paris under the auspices of M. Rouvier and by means of “virements,” or transfers of credits voted by Parliament [the Chamber of Deputies] from the War and Public Works Departments to the Foreign Office, which was to pay the members of the syndicate.
The story was like something from the Arabian Nights, she wrote. “But . . . I could not regard it as fanciful. Dr. Herz was the key to worse scandals than the Panama one. . . .” The incriminating documents were in a safe place in London, Herz said. The reason he refused to return to France was that he had been charged with treason and espionage in the Chamber, and this meant he could be tried behind closed doors. His sentence, almost certainly, would be one of long penal servitude–Devil’s Island.
“It smells bad in here,” one spectator is reported to have said the morning of March 8 as the second trial began. “Yes,” answered another, “it stinks of scapegoats.”
The judges now were in magnificent red robes, and the parade of witnesses included Floquet, de Freycinet, Clemenceau. Remarks made by some witnesses also struck the audience as uproariously funny for the first time. Sans-Leroy, for example, declared on the second day that the 200,000 francs he deposited in his bank account just after the committee vote on the lottery had been part of his wife’s dowry. His attitude, he insisted after the judge called for order, was always “that of a member of a committee who wished to be enlightened,” which sent the audience into another convulsion of laughter.
Then, that same day, Charles Baihaut burst into a long, agonized confession, head down, voice cracking. The once exceedingly self-righteous minister told how he had obtained 375,000 francs as a down payment for his support of the lottery measure. “For fifteen years I served France faithfully as deputy and as minister and led an irreproachable life. Even now I cannot understand how I could have sinned.”
Yet for all this, Charles de Lesseps was again the one around whom everything turned in a drama that held the nation spellbound. His account now was at once open and lively and immensely interesting. Spectators were immediately conscious of the change. “His intelligence, his ability, his dignified bearing, all made a marked impression . . .” wrote the French historian Andre Siegfried. “He appeared chiefly as someone who had been struggling against a gang. He had undertaken an impossible task, and had done so against his own better judgment, and yet he
had tried to fight on to the bitter end. But the sharpers had got the better of him . . .”
He could have put the blame on his father at any time, but this he never did, not even by inference. His position, simply stated, was that neither he nor any official of the Compagnie Universelle had set out to bribe anyone; rather, they had been the repeated victims of extortion. Everybody had wanted a cut. The company had been told to pay for political support, for influence on the Bourse, for the willingness not to discredit its claims–or face the consequences. Newspaper reporters, financial advisers, people who merely knew people who supposedly could help or do harm–“They seemed to rise up from the pavement. We had to deal with their threats, their libels, and their broken promises.”
At one point, when Judge Pilet Desjardins told him to “cut it short,” Charles calmly replied, “No, I have time enough. All this is necessary to my defense.”
Powerful financiers, he continued, could not force anyone to buy stocks or bonds, but they certainly could prevent them from doing so. He described the initial overtures made by Herz, who had talked of the “improvements” he could obtain in the company’s standing with the government. “We should have preferred that he had not come to us, but . . . it was better to do that which would make him our ally instead of that which would make him our enemy.” Herz had taken him to visit President Grevy at Grevy’s country estate, where Herz, Charles said, had been received as a friend of the family. “I was then convinced that he was a man we must reckon with.”
“Your duty as a man of honor was to show such a fellow to the door,” interrupted the judge.
“But we could not make an enemy of the sleeping partner in La Justice” he answered.
He recalled how the first sale of lottery bonds had been wrecked by anonymous telegrams announcing his father’s death. “Subscriptions stopped and we appealed to the courts for the punishment of those who had sent the telegrams, but there was no prosecution of the offenders. We were obliged to protect ourselves. . . . The financiers showed us how to resort to those methods which are now matters of general knowledge. They said: ‘Unless you pay the money to all the banks under the influence of Girardin [Emile de Girardin, owner of Le Petit Journal] you will have all the newspapers in Paris against you.’ We still held out against such methods, the newspapers attacked us, and finally we were driven to paying out enormous sums right and left . . . and this mode of procedure was encouraged by the government.”
“Leave the government alone,” the judge responded sharply, which brought a great outburst from the audience–shouts of “Why not the government?” “Give us the truth”–and the judge ordered that the room be cleared. Charles testified subsequently that he had decided not to pay de Reinach and that de Reinach had threatened to take the company to court, warning that a public scene would bring the company to its knees. But Charles had made up his mind to run that risk and would have, he said, had not Floquet, de Freycinet, and Clemenceau sent for him, one by one, to tell him–“for the good of the Republic”–to pay de Reinach off and keep the waters smooth. Boulanger had been on the rise, Charles explained, and they were fearful of the consequences should the Panama company suddenly collapse. “They were very polite about the matter. They did not take me by the nape of the neck. . . .”
When their turn came de Freycinet and Clemenceau denied any part in the affair. Charles Sans-Leroy said he had no idea how his initials happened to be on the incriminating check stubs. Accused by the prosecution of selling his vote, Sans-Leroy, a large and extremely homely man in pince-nez glasses, replied with perfect equanimity, “Prove it.”
Charles de Lesseps was probably telling the simple truth as he knew it through the length of this, “The Great Bribery Trial.” Yet neither Floquet, nor de Freycinet, nor Clemenceau, nor Rouvier, nor anyone of importance was ever prosecuted. No newspaper publishers or reporters were brought to judgment. Those deputies and the one senator on trial were acquitted, Sans-Leroy as well. The single political figure to be convicted was Baïhaut and that was only because he had confessed.
The jury delivered its verdict March 21, 1893. Charles and Blondin, the intermediary in the arrangement with Baïhaut, were found guilty with extenuating circumstances. Charles was sentenced to a year in prison, Blondin to two years. Baihaut’s sentence was for five years, the forfeiture of all civil rights, a fine of 750,000 francs, and full repayment of the 375,000-franc bribe. If Baïhaut were to find himself unable to meet these payments, Charles de Lesseps would be held accountable.
Charles de Lesseps was alone in maintaining his composure through the long reading of the sentence.
From everything that was said during the course of the two trials and from the mammoth report issued by the Deputies committee when its investigations ended in June, a few generalizations and one or two further facts of interest can be drawn.
The total amount paid out to de Reinach, Herz, and different political people, either directly or through de Reinach or Arton, can only be approximated. De Reinach, for example, received some 4,500,000 francs for his handling of the flotation syndicates, plus another 3,000,000 francs for “publicity,” plus nearly 5,000,000 more at the time Herz was threatening to “wreck everything.” That makes 12,500,000 francs–$2,500,000–that the company paid to Jacques de Reinach alone. Some of that was perfectly legitimate theoretically (for his part in the various security flotations); a good portion of it (according to the check stubs) went to fix various politicians; much of it, perhaps even all the rest of it, went to Cornelius Herz. But Herz is known to have received 600,000 francs directly from the company. Baihaut got 375,000, Floquet obtained another 250,000, Sans-Leroy almost certainly got 300,000. And undoubtedly there were others. But how many? Perhaps there were more than a hundred, as the brave, unpleasant Delahaye had charged. No one will ever know. But it seems reasonable to conclude that the total sum paid out for political influence and for “friendship” on the Bourse could not have been less than 20,000,000 francs, or roughly $4,000,000. Conceivably it could have been a great deal more than that.
Payments to the press, beginning with the first stock flotation in 1880–a subject about which little was said during the trials–were reckoned by the committee to have been between 12,000,000 and 13,000,000 francs. No less than 2,575 different French newspapers and periodicals had shared in the company’s beneficence. Some little fly-by-night publications had even been founded for the sole purpose of getting in on the take. In addition to such giants as he Temps and he Petit Journal (which received the largest sums), the full list included such publications as Wines and Alcohols Bulletin, Bee-keeper’s Journal and the Choral Societies Echo.
Frequently payments were made to a particular editor or writer (for example, checks written to Arthur Meyer, of he Gaulois, amounted to 100,000 francs); and often as not, and especially in the early years, the confidence these men expressed in the Panama enterprise, their faith in Ferdinand de Lesseps, were perfectly genuine. One man who did several Panama articles for a fee of 1,000 francs per article became so thoroughly sold by what he wrote that he invested all his savings in Panama stock and as a result lost everything.
Nor, it should be noted, was there anything strictly illegal or even unorthodox about such practices. What impressed the committee most, in fact, was the extent of services rendered for money invested. As large a sum as 12,000,000 to 13,000,000 francs might seem, it represented only about 1 percent of the company’s total expenditures. of course, it was regrettable, the committee declared, that the press had need to resort to such practices, but such were the realities of survival.
Of those convicted, Baïhaut suffered the most. He was put in solitary confinement in a prison where inmates were made to wear a hood whenever they were taken from their cells. Only after three years of this did the courts and the public decide he had been punished enough.
Gustave Eiffel, the only engineer to have been stained by the scandal, would be cleared later of having done any “dishonorable” act by a
special committee of inquiry convened by the Grand Chancellor of the Legion of Honor. But his career as a builder was finished; he would thereafter apply himself to wholly different work in meteorology and aerodynamics.
De Freycinet, Floquet, and Rouvier would recover from their disgrace in time and be recalled to office. Loubet eventually became president of the Republic.
For Georges Clemenceau, the future savior of France– he Pere de la Victoire during the First World War–the next elections (those of 1893) were a disaster. The voters had cast their own verdict on his part in the affair and it would be nine more years before he made a successful return to public life. His own standard interpretation of the scandal was that it had been engineered by the Boulangists, and that the only reason they descended on Herz was that Herz had refused to give them money. When he re-emerged to save the country in 1917, Clemenceau would be seventy-six, as old as de Lesseps had been when he set out to redeem French honor after Sedan.
As for Cornelius Herz, he spent the rest of his life inside the hotel at Bournemouth. How much or how little truth there was to the things he told Emily Crawford cannot be determined. The secret cache of incriminating documents was never found. He died in 1898, taking his side of the story with him.
Leopold-Emile Arton was eventually discovered living peacefully in London. He was returned to France, tried, convicted, and sent to prison. Some years after his release, he committed suicide. Yet he had achieved an immortality of sorts. Spoofs of his flight from the detectives became the delight of the Paris music halls and among the most fascinated observers at his trial was Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, who did a series of rapid pencil sketches of the proceedings.
Gustave Eiffel never went to prison because in June of 1893 the Cour de Cassation, the supreme court of France, overruled the verdict of the Court of Appeal. Eiffel, Fontane, Cottu, Ferdinand and Charles de Lesseps were all acquitted on a technical ground: the summonses for their arrest, issued November 21, 1892, had come more than three years after the most recent of their alleged crimes and so, the court ruled, they were entitled to immunity under the statute of limitations.
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