Crime de Charlie

In France, mere des armes, des arts et des lois, at Paris, ville lumiere, cite des passions. Mlle. Stanislawa Uminska, beautiful young Polish actress, stood trial for the killing of her fiance, Jean Zysnowsky, Polish author.

Over night, the trial became a cause celebre. Newspapers devoted many long columns of what they almost unanimously called a crime de charite. Newsboys ran madly along the boulevards bawling out last-minute news of the proceedings. The kiosks were besieged by excited crouds loudly demanding the latest edition of the Intransigeant or some other afternoon newspaper. In the hot cafes, where garcons scurried hither and thither with the large trays groaning under the weight of amer-picons, bocks and grogs americains, men discussed the trial in an undertone, sad, strained expressions on their faces.

Across the river, in front of the Palais de Justice, a dense crowd waited in the cold for the scraps of news flung to them ever and anon by devious persons. Inside, Maitre Donal Guigue, Public Prosecutor, demanded the death sentence. Nobody had the right to kill, he said. But his heart was not behind his words; he was reciting a mere formality. To Maitre Henri Robert, defending lawyer, he confided: "I envy you your job. Would I were standing in your place. This case is one in which the Public Prosecutor's role is not that of a sympathetic figure."

Silence reigned and yet gave way to greater silence as M. Henri Robert called the 23-year-old defendant to testify. She was not put into the prisoner's dock, but sat on a special seat in the centre of the court room. She stood up, a slim, neat figure dressed in black from hat to shoes, her delicate, pretty, pale face appearing as fine chalk contrasted with charcoal. Under a searching cross-examination in a sympathetically inclined court where men and women sat silent with tears streaming from their eyes, she told her story: She and the young author fell in love, became engaged. The future threw wide its arms to receive them in happiness. She was successful, he was successful. Then came a tragic day when her fiance learned that he was suffering from incurable cancer and tuberculosis. All that was in Poland.

Polish doctors advised radium treatment, said he would have to go to Paris for it. She threw up her work to accompany her sweetheart to the French capital; she nursed him tenderly ; she gave her own blood in a transfusion operation. It was all to no purpose; he grew worse and worse.

The young man began to beg her to kill him and so mercifully end his suffering. He suggested that she should shoot him through the mouth. At first she refused and then, one night, "Suddenly I felt I must obey," she said in a soft, low voice that sounded throughout the court with dread distinctness. Her lover had said to her: "When you realize that all hope is gone, then for pity's sake save me unnecessary suffering. Shoot me in the mouth; that's the best place." She took a pistol, held the muzzle close to her lover's lips, turned away her head, fired.

Maitre Henri Robert asked the jury to acquit "the young stranger here and to give an answer without leaving this courtroom and this child."

The jury did. Unanimously, and without rising, the jury instructed the foreman to say "Not guilty!"