Few hearings were as well attended as the one where Stanislawa Uminska was to be judged, accused of the murder of her fiancé, the writer Jean Zarnowski. We know that the young Polish actress shortened, with a revolver shot, the slow agony of the man she loved. It is therefore a drama of love and pity that the jurors of the Seine had to judge today.

The court, gentlemen!

While the sacramental words silence a large, hurried crowd, dominated by the feminine element, and from which rises a hubbub of dress rehearsal, the accused makes her appearance. Free, without any guard accompanying her, she takes her place on this bench where so many others, having experienced anguished minutes. Very frail, humbly dressed in black, a little serge blouse dress, a large soft felt hat, she appears almost childish. Rather than this actress "idolatrated in Warsaw" that Mr. Henri-Robert will tell us about later, we think we see a puny adolescent who has grown up too quickly. At no time will the pure and smooth mask of this passionate child betray what is happening inside her now. Disdainful of ordinary means, tears, sobs, she freezes in a modest immobility. Neither the memories of an end of which no detail will be hidden from us, nor the spontaneous testimonies of those who saw her then and since, nor even the reading of these love letters that so few women can hear without trouble will animate with a shudder this small pale, resolute head, constrained by the will not to appear to implore.
Distant, as if indifferent to the verdict of men, she remains motionless, her hands crossed on her knees. No arrogance, no pathetic appeal from a little being who has been visited by misfortune and who strives to bear its weight without weakening. Not once will she turn her beautiful exile's gaze toward the crowd that spies on her. Whether the president questions her or the attorney general pours the floods of literary eloquence on her bowed brow, she does not move. Never was an accused more restrained in dramatic means. Her voice itself articulates only brief answers: "Yes... Yes... Oh! Yes..." Everything about her is of an extreme simplicity and reserve. For a moment, with a mechanical gesture, she will remove her felt hat and appear, with her short brown hair, like a young page in mourning. Then, until the acquittal, one will see nothing of her but the curve of a willful chin, a frail inclined neck half covered by the matt brim of the hat.

You said, during the investigation, to explain your act: "His suffering was becoming intolerable. Every day he asked me: "Will you finally have the courage to kill me?" I said: no. Days followed day after day with their perpetual suffering. This last one... I was convinced that if he woke up it would be to suffer more. I shot." The witnesses Stanislawa listens; all this seems so far from her. She is no longer, on this bench, anything but a sad little girl who straightens up and whose cheekbones are a little pink. We can imagine her torn, but still proud, and without remorse. She only comes out of this tower of silence where she isolates herself after the deposition of Doctor Roussiy. Jean Zarnowski, incurable, wanted his end. It was only for him, to leave a little illusion about his condition that I had decided on the blood transfusion. This time, Stanislawa gets up; searching painfully for her words, she articulates:
-Because you were able to give him hope, I thank you, sir, with all my heart. This is the only sentence that will be heard from her by an audience eager for strong emotions, beautiful cries, and who, after the verdict, will withdraw inwardly disappointed. Doctor Paul, Doctor Roussiy affirm that, mortally wounded before the revolver shot, the writer could not have recovered; witnesses attest to the care with which he was surrounded by his friend.
Much less simple, and how much more theatrical than the young actress stranded there, Mr. Attorney General Donat-Guigue takes the floor. His indictment inclines to human indulgence, to serene kindness. Why must he mix it, after so many flowers to the living and the illustrious dead, so much literature? Poplars, Racine's heroines, Berryer, Labori, the Garden of Olives, Pascal's sufferings find a place there and, if we approve of him when in an unexpected alexandrine he declares: "The blood she shed was a little bit his own", we follow him less easily in certain metaphors: "The agony is the sharpest sun of human terror and pain..."

All this slides over the child whose fate is at stake; nothing distracts her from the thoughts she is following. Even the peroration where the attorney general, in a beautiful movement, leans towards pity, does not move her.
After a useless and slow plea by Mr. Roudenko, Mr. Henri-Robert, sober, moving and concise, pleads for acquittal, paraphrasing this beautiful thought by Maeterlinck: "If I were God, I would have pity on the hearts of men..." Five minutes of deliberation are enough for the jury to return a verdict of acquittal. Frail, clutching her shoulders, Stanislawa Uminska, free, led by two Polish ladies, leaves the courtroom without a glance...

Huguette GARNIER.

Ms. UMINSKA IN THE DEFENDANTS' BENCH LISTENING TO THE INDICATION.

G. GOURAUD AND Mr. J. BÉDIER SEATED BEHIND THE COURT,