The Caillaux Drama

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However, I secured a magnificent success. I crushed[2] the income-tax while appearing to defend it, I received an ovation from the Centre and from the Right, and I managed not to make the Left too discontented. I succeeded in giving the wheel a turn towards the Right which was quite indispensable. To-day I had anot

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5, 1901-thirteen years before it was published in the Figaro. When he wrote it Monsieur Caillaux was Minister of Finance in the Waldeck-Rousseau Cabinet, and apart from the tragic event which followed close on its publication, the letter is a curious and upsetting confession of political duplicity. The income-tax has been Monsieur Joseph Caillaux's hobby hor

de M. Caillaux relative

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is not merely a political move, and whether Monsieur Caillaux may not again be "crushing the income-tax while appearing to defend it." His own letter is a terrible comment on his policy

laux, accused him of conniving at the escape of Rochette from justice because Rochette's money was useful to his personal policy, accused him of deliberate lying in the

letter had been written to Madame Gueydan-Dupré, who afterwards-five years after the letter's date, when she was divorced-became the wife of Monsieur Caillaux. When the letter was written in these intimate terms Madame Gueydan-Dupré, whom Monsieur Caillaux addressed with the familiar "tu" which means so m

r Calmette had suppressed the last few lines of this letter. The mere fact that the first part of it was published, that in his article he made it clear that he knew how it had begun and ended, and made clear to others to whom it had been written, was all-sufficient for the woman who now bears Monsieur Caillaux's name. That woman knew tha

st wife, Madame Gueydan. She knew that the letters which she [Pg 148] dreaded had been destroyed on that occasion, but she knew, too, that their destruction had been obtained at the price of a reconciliation between Monsieur Caillaux and his first wife, and she knew, no woman better, th

"This must be stopped"? Can you not see her snatching at her copy of the Figaro next morning, skipping with an impatient shrug of the shoulders her husband's communiqué to the Agence Havas, and reading down the page with anxious eyes to see whether the revelation of the letters which she feared would follow? [Pg 149] One shudders at the mental picture of the lives of Monsi