The Dynamite Club: How a Bombing in Fin-de-Siecle Paris Ignited the Age of Modern Terror (27 page)

Émile remarked that he had no illusions. His act would not be understood by many ordinary people. Many workers would consider the anarchists their enemy. It did not matter. Even some anarchists would reject "propaganda by the deed," as they spent their time drawing a subtle distinction between theoreticians and terrorists. They were too cowardly to risk their lives: now was the time for "action without weakness" or retreat. In the war without pity, anarchists would ask for none. They dispensed death and knew how to submit to it. He would await the verdict of the jury with indifference. His would not be the last head that would be cut off, because those who were dying of hunger were beginning to know how to find "your cafés and great restaurants."

And then, in a remarkably brazen flourish, he concluded:

You will add other names to the bloody lists of our dead. You have hanged us in Chicago, decapitated us in Germany, garroted us in Xerez, shot us in Barcelona, guillotined us in Montbrison and in Paris, but what you can never destroy is anarchy. Its roots are too deep, born in a poisonous society which is falling apart; [anarchism] is a violent reaction against the established order. It represents the egalitarian and libertarian aspirations which are opening a breach in contemporary authority. It is everywhere, which makes anarchy elusive. It will finish by killing you.

Émile's defense caused a marked, prolonged stir in the courtroom. Henri Varennes of
Le Figaro
was amazed by his composure: "He is perhaps a monster, but he is not a coward."

Maître Hornbostel, immeasurably less eloquent than Émile, described his client as "an intellectual pushed to the extreme. Nothing exists except what he thinks." Hornbostel asked pity for Émile, "a dreamer, a fanatic," who believed that his acts would serve humanity. His crimes thus should be considered crimes of passion. The lawyer earned laughter the hard way when he reminded the jury that the first bomb placed by his client was "his first infraction against the rules of society!"

Hornbostel's defense was disastrous. (The actor Silvain assessed his pupil's performance, after about a dozen lessons, in this way: "He knew very well what his role should have been, his speech for the defense. I taught him certain intonations. But in the courtroom, it was nothing but shit, shit, and more shit.") The journalist Varennes mocked Hornbostel's Marseille accent and "historical and literary references thrown out in no particular order, making a sort of bouillabaisse out of which emerged the names of Descartes, Mohammad, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, Napoleon, etc."

The jury entered the deliberating room at 6:30
P.M.
and returned in less than an hour. Émile bounded up the stairs like the schoolboy he had recently been, smiling as he awaited the verdict. He stood with his hands in his pockets, telling a court artist sitting not far from him, "You will cut off my head." The jury found Émile guilty on all counts, with no extenuating circumstances. Asked if he had anything to say about the verdict, Émile replied that he accepted it. Judge Potier pronounced the sentence of death at 7:45, to which Émile uttered, "Good." Led from the courtyard, he said to no one in particular, "Courage, comrades! And long live anarchy!"

The court clerk came to Émile's cell to ask if he wanted to appeal the court's verdict. He did not, adding that he would not request a presidential pardon. At 9:15 he was transferred to the prison of La Roquette, in a
quartier populaire
he knew very well, near the cemetery of Père Lachaise, below the Villa Faucheur.

Rose Caubet Henry and Dr. Goupil were still convinced that it was possible to save Émile in spite of himself. The doctor wanted the court to order a psychological examination. His fixed gaze at the trial and "his loss of the instinct of self-preservation" could reflect an unstable mind. Goupil contended that "monomaniacs" spoke sensibly as long as their specific aberration had not taken over. In his view, Émile was not responsible for his acts and should not be executed. Goupil believed that at least four of the jurors had been inclined to consider "extenuating circumstances." Émile's defiance had prevented Goupil from carrying this argument further at the trial. Madame Henry hoped to plead her case to President Sadi Carnot in person, as only the president could commute the death sentence. The socialist Paul Brousse, who had left anarchism behind after originally helping create the concept of "propaganda by the deed," agreed with Hornbostel on at least one point: Émile Henry's execution would only create another martyr. Such a death "is the life of anarchism: to kill the doctrine, we must spare the indoctrinater."

On May 1, Émile wrote to his mother. He hoped that her strong will would sustain her during "this final test." She would still have two sons left. This, to be sure, was hardly what she had hoped for her middle son, "on whom she had pinned so many great hopes." This "beautiful dream" could not be realized "because life today has only suffering for us." She would hear that he was a murderer, but if he had killed, it was for "a great idea." Friends would console her and ultimately they would see in her a victim of society, which took away her son. He hoped that his younger brother, Jules, whom he believed would certainly later become "a very fierce and energetic
compagnon
," would be strong, signing "a thousand kisses from your Émile."

Émile's mother had indeed emerged as a tragic figure, a subject of public fascination and pity. When Madame Henry came to Paris, she nervously scurried here and there, always dressed in the same black dress, scarf, and simple hat adorned with a little blue flower. Her eyes reddened by tears, she sadly noted that the days were going by too quickly. She carried with her two little black bags. One contained letters regarding her son's trial; the other was full of articles clipped from newspapers, a letter from Émile, the certificate for good work in school awarded Émile by the king of Spain and by one of his French schools, and various other letters, including several from priests. A nun had sent her a "miraculous image" of the Virgin Mary, with instructions that she should pray before it round the clock, because Mary would never refuse her. She was to instruct her son to swallow the postage-stamp-sized Virgin Mary—"you give it to him by rolling it up like a little meatball, or in a little wine," so that he would not actually see the figure of Mary. "Believe me, Madame, this will really change his heart." The name of her auberge, û l'Espérance, seemed more ironic than ever. There was not much hope left.

Madame Henry implored her son to sign the appeal for clemency on May 2, the last possible day. But her son awaited execution as a deliverance—not unlike the radical revolutionary Maximilien Robespierre during the French Revolution. Émile too sought revolutionary immortality. Several days later, when told that his mother was coming to see him again, Émile told his guards, "It's useless. I don't want to see her! I don't want to see anyone!" When she arrived, he told her that her visits now hurt him. She should abandon efforts to see President Carnot. Madame Henry had already written to the president's wife, who had replied that only a defense lawyer could appeal for clemency. Émile then asked the guards to return him to his cell, and turning toward his mother, he held her two hands and said goodbye.

In the meantime, Élisa Gauthey had become a star in the Parisian press. Now all of Paris had read Émile's 1891 letters to her. As his mother put it, he was "so gentle, in those times." Two journalists went to see her in the attic apartment she shared with her husband on the sixth floor on boulevard Voltaire. Élisa was wearing her bathrobe, sometimes struggling to keep it properly closed. She would (for a price?) break her silence. She quickly insisted that she had never been the mistress of Émile. Had his passion for her brought about "the strange evolution in his mind?" She related the awkward moments during her visit to Brévannes with her husband in 1891. Since then, Émile had not ceased to proclaim his love for her, although she had time and time again reminded him that she was married to a man he knew. But he had continued to pursue her. She had never consented, never. Did she regret it? "Yes, and I will not hide it. If it is true that this passion was disastrous for him, I will always reproach myself that it was cruel for him." She could not sleep. She had stopped living. Yes, she wished that she had been his mistress.

Meanwhile, Hornbostel awaited the call to go to the Palais de l'Elysée, where he would plead his case. By tradition, no one condemned to death could be executed before at least a lawyer had spoken about the situation with the president of the republic.

In the middle of place de l'Opéra, policeman Poisson was directing traffic, surrounded by carriages and buses. The policeman had no interest in going to see the blade fall: "If they cut off his head, there will be one less of those bandits."

For days rumor had the execution set for May 12. Yet in the wee hours of each day earlier that month, a small crowd showed up at place de la Roquette just in case. The police too were there, to maintain order. Bars in the vicinity stayed open late to accommodate revelers, before closing at 3 or 3:30
A.M.,
when it became clear that the guillotine would not be operated that night. A bomb exploded on the elegant avenue Kléber on May 11.

Invented during the French Revolution by a doctor of the same name, the guillotine, popularly known as "the Widow," became a symbol of the French nation. Reflecting the empire of "reason," it eliminated both class distinction and hideous torture from state-sanctioned executions, and it delivered instantaneous death. Public executions became something of a spectacle, and the scaffold first stood at place de la Révolution, where revolutionary justice would be dispensed by the "national razor." Enormous crowds watched the execution of Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, Danton, Robespierre, and many others, carefully studying the comportment of the executioner and, above all, those about to die. Viewers leaned forward to catch the final words of the condemned and watched as the executioner triumphantly held up each severed head.

In 1851, the scaffold was moved outside the gates of the prison of La Roquette in Paris. It was also reduced in size from its previous more theatrical dimensions. During the Commune, a crowd seized the guillotine from its place near the prison and burned it at the foot of a statue of Voltaire. The guillotine returned with the smashing of the Commune, but in 1872 its scaffold disappeared altogether. Henceforth, the guillotine stood on the ground, bringing to an end that dramatic final walk up the stairs. As the priest blessed the victim, the executioner's assistants grabbed him and instantly threw him down onto the plank, so that he would not have time to realize what was happening. During the period 1800–1825, about 120 people were guillotined per year. That number declined in the following decades, to about 28 a year in the 1860s and then about 10 to 12 a year into the mid-188os.

The role of the head executioner, "Monsieur de Paris," remained paramount, extending in a well-known lineage from the famous Sanson, who worked during the French Revolution, to Anatole Deibler, who would carry out the last public execution shortly before World War II. Executioners, like butchers, were considered a blood trade. They existed as a caste apart, and their families intermarried.

In 1894, Monsieur de Paris was Antoine-Louis Deibler, the son and grandson of executioners. Like past masters of the guillotine, his was a household name, his renown reinforced by his handiwork with Ravachol and Vaillant. He had received death threats, and one rumor had hinted at a plot to kidnap him. Someone had even tried to steal the guillotine itself. Old and ill, Deibler walked with an unsteady gait, and his hands trembled. Now in the twilight of his distinguished career, he would retire four years later, having executed 360 people, 154 as chief executioner, and he would be succeeded by his son.

On Saturday, May 20, Maître Hornbostel finally received a summons to see President Carnot at the Palais de l'Élysée in the afternoon. In what was only a very brief encounter, the president promised to examine with care both Émile Henry's dossier and the request for clemency put forward by Madame Henry and Dr. Goupil. Hornbostel naively left the palace with a sense of hope, believing that, at a minimum, the execution would be put off. Yet the lawyer was barely out the door when Carnot sent the dossier to the minister of justice, denying a pardon. The order for Émile's execution went out at 4:30
P.M.
At 8
P.M.
on Sunday, May 20, two gendarmes carried the orders to Deibler, popularly known as "Doctor Deibler" even though all his "patients" expired on the table. Deibler was ordered to report for work at the Roquette prison at 4:00
A.M.
on Monday, May 21. The news of the impending execution was kept secret until about 10
P.M.
Sunday night, in order to make possible anarchist attacks hard to plan so swiftly, as well as to limit the crowds that would inevitably flock to place de la Roquette. In Barcelona, six men accused of a bloody attack against the Liceo opera house were executed the same day.

Maurice Barrés walked, at about 2
A.M.,
through place Voltaire (now place Léon Blum), where the "personalities"—journalists, politicians, writers, and others having prefectorial authorization—were allowed to pass on the way to place de la Roquette. There, they could stand in the equivalent of theater boxes at the site of execution. Walking up rue de la Roquette, he passed the Petite-Roquette on the left, where young convicts and children were incarcerated. To the right stood the prison de la Roquette, which had been constructed in 1836 to accommodate convicts condemned to death—their stays would be short—and to hold some others with life sentences. It consisted of two buildings of three floors each. Beginning in 1851, the guillotine was placed there on five stone slabs. Thus the prison was also known as the "Abbey of Five Stones."

The site seemed intentionally provocative. To decapitate criminals just off a street that leads from place de la Bastille to Ménilmontant was "to put on a play for the 'dangerous classes' right at the frontier of their territory, [showing them] the pitiless rigor of justice."