in a fur muff and asked to see Gaston Calmette. When told he was away but would return within an hour, she sat to wait. She was ushered into Calmette's office around 6 pm. Asking whether the editor knew why she had come, Calmette answered in the negative; immediately afterward, Henriette Caillaux fired six shots from a Browning automatic pistol into Calmette's abdomen, mortally wounding him. Henriette Caillaux made no attempt to escape and newspaper workers in adjoining offices quickly apprehended her and summoned a doctor and the police. Demanding not to be touched, she attempted to defend herself, saying that "there is no longer any justice in France" but was told curtly to be quiet. She refused to be transported to the police headquarters in a police van, insisting on being driven there by her chauffeur in her own car, which was still parked outside. The police agreed to this and she was formally charged upon reaching the headquarters. Gaston Calmette died six hours after being shot. Trial After substantial publicity and a lengthy investigation, her trial opened at the Paris Cour d'assises on 20 July 1914, where it promptly dominated French news. The trial, which included a sexual scandal and a crime passionel by a society French lady, received twice as many column inches in Le Temps as the ongoing July Crisis, even as late as three days before the start of hostilities. Because of the lax legal and procedural restraints in the cour d'assises, the conduct of the trial "seemed almost structured for drama [and] given a certain kind of case, it could produce a spectacle more compelling than anything the theatres could provide". At the time, opinion of the assassination divided on political grounds: the left believed Calmette's character assassination had driven Madam Caillaux into temporary insanity; the right believed her a cold-blooded killer who had acted to silence a critic at her husband's request. It featured a deposition from the president of the Republic, an unheard-of occurrence at a criminal proceeding almost anywhere, along with the fact that many of the participants were among the most powerful members of French society. Heightening the drama, Henriette's husband threatened to cause a further scandal during the trial by releasing affidavits allegedly in his possession which showed that Poincaré was behind the press campaign against him. If convicted, Madame Caillaux could be subject to life imprisonment at hard