A few days later, just before midnight, a note is pushed under my door. By the time I step outside to check the landing, whoever has brought it has gone. The message reads: 11, rue de Grenelle—if you are sure.
I hold it to the fire and watch as it catches light, then drop it in the grate. Later I take the poker and crush the cinders to powder. If my maid is an informant, as I strongly suspect, it really would be too rich a joke if she were to take my torn-up litter to the Statistical Section for them to piece it back together. I have tried to convince Louis of the need for these precautions. “Use intermediaries wherever possible,” I tell him. “Pay a stranger to deliver your messages. Trust nothing to the postal services. Avoid regular patterns of behaviour. Plant false trails if you can—go and see people whose views might be considered suspect, purely in order to confuse your watchers. Take indirect routes. Switch taxis. Remember their resources are extensive but not inexhaustible: we can run them pretty ragged if we try …”
When I go to bed, I am careful to keep my gun nearby.
The concierge brings me the morning’s newspapers; she leaves them outside the door. I wait until she’s gone before I fetch them in, and then I read them in bed, wearing my dressing gown. I have nothing else to do. As usual, the Dreyfus affair is the dominant story. It unfolds each day like a serial, peopled by an exotic cast of characters I scarcely recognise, including me (the forty-three-year-old high-flying bachelor spymaster who has betrayed his former chiefs). Among the latest plot twists are the letters Esterhazy sent to his then mistress, Madame de Boulancy, thirteen years ago, which have ended up in Le Figaro (If this evening I were told that I am to be killed tomorrow like an Uhlan captain while running my sword through the French, I would certainly be perfectly happy. I wouldn’t harm a little dog, but I would have a hundred thousand Frenchmen killed with pleasure). Esterhazy has denounced these as Jewish forgeries and demanded, through his lawyer, a full court-martial to clear his name—a request to which the army has agreed. Émile Zola has written another of his passionate evocations of Dreyfus’s plight: a being cut off from everyone else, isolated not only by the ocean but by eleven guards who surround him night and day like a human wall … Meanwhile, in the Chamber of Deputies there has been a full-scale debate on the affair, opened by the Prime Minister, who took shelter behind the ramparts of res judicata: “Let me be clear at the outset. There is no Dreyfus case! [Applause] There is not and cannot be a Dreyfus case! [Prolonged applause]” And for the avoidance of any doubt on the matter, General Billot, summoned to the tribune from the Ministry of War, has restated the government’s position even more strongly: “Dreyfus has been rightly judged and unanimously condemned. On my soul and conscience, as a soldier and the head of the army, I hold that verdict truly delivered and Dreyfus guilty.”
I lay aside the papers. Really, it is beyond hypocrisy; it is beyond even lying: it has become a psychosis.
My uniform hangs in my wardrobe, like the sloughed-off skin of some former life. I have not been formally discharged from the army. Technically I am on indefinite leave pending the verdict of Pellieux’s inquiry and the minister’s response. But I prefer to dress in civilian clothes in order not to draw attention to myself. Just before noon I put on a good stout overcoat and a bowler hat, take my umbrella from the stand and go out into the day.
Outwardly, I hope, I wear my usual mask of detachment, even irony, for there has never been a situation, however dire, even this one, that did not strike me as containing at least some element of the human comedy. But then I think of Pauline, of how when I discovered her on my bed she could only keep repeating the same phrase, over and over: “He won’t let me see the girls …” She has given a deposition to Pellieux and has fled the press and gone to stay with her brother, a naval officer, and her sister-in-law near Toulon. Louis has agreed to handle her legal affairs. He has advised us not to have any contact until the divorce is finalised. We said goodbye in a rainstorm in the Bois de Bolougne, watched by an agent of the Sûreté. And it is for what they have done to her, more even than what they have done to Dreyfus, that I cannot forgive the General Staff. For the first time in my life I carry hatred inside me. It is an almost physical thing, like a concealed knife. Sometimes, when I am alone, I like to take it out and run my thumb along its cold, sharp blade.
My watcher is there as usual, on the opposite side of the street, leaning against the wooden fence surrounding the building site, smoking a cigarette; no doubt he will have a partner somewhere. This particular fellow I have registered before—scrawny, red-bearded, in a thick brown jacket and flat cap. He has given up even pretending to be anything other than a police agent. He flicks away his cigarette and slouches after me, about twenty paces behind, his hands in his pockets. Like a company commander in a bad mood I decide this sluggard could do with a thorough workout, and I quicken my speed until I am almost running—across the avenue Montaigne and along to the place de la Concorde and over the river to the boulevard Saint-Germain. I glance back. I am sweating despite the December cold, but I am not suffering half as much as my tail is, to judge by the look of him: his face is now as red as his hair.
What I need is a guardian of the peace, and I know exactly where to find one: close to the police commissary of Saint-Thomas-d’Aquin, patrolling on the corner of the boulevard Raspail. “Monsieur!” I call to him, drawing closer. “I am a colonel in the French army and this man is following me. I request that you arrest him and take us both to your commanding officer so that I can lay a formal complaint.”
He moves with gratifying alacrity. “You mean this gentleman, Colonel?” He takes the elbow of the breathless agent.
The red-bearded man gasps, “Let … go of me, you … idiot!”
Seeing what is happening, the second Sûreté agent, this one dressed as a travelling salesman with a cardboard briefcase, breaks cover to cross the street and argue on behalf of his partner. He too is perspiring and frustrated and also makes an insulting remark about the general intelligence of uniformed policemen, at which the guardian of the peace loses his temper and within a minute they are both in custody.
Ten minutes later I am able to leave my name and address with the duty sergeant in the commissary and slip away unescorted.
The rue de Grenelle is only just round the corner. Number 11 is an imposing ancient property. I check along the street to make sure I am unobserved and then ring the bell. Almost at once the front door opens and a maid lets me in. Behind her, Louis waits anxiously in the hallway. He glances past my shoulder. “Are you being followed?”
“Not anymore.” I give the maid my umbrella and hat. From behind a closed door comes a drone of male voices.
Louis helps me off with my coat. “Are you really sure you want to do this?”
“Where are they? Through there?”
I open the door myself. Six middle-aged men in morning coats standing around a blazing fire cease talking and turn to look at me: I am reminded of a group portrait by Fantin-Latour—Homage to Delacroix, perhaps. Louis says, “Gentlemen, this is Colonel Picquart.”
There is a moment of silence and then one of the men—bald-headed and with a heavy drooping moustache, whom I recognise as Georges Clemenceau, the left-wing politician and editor of the radical newspaper L’Aurore—starts a round of clapping in which everyone joins. As Louis ushers me into the room, another man, dapper and attractive, calls out cheerfully, “Bravo Picquart! Vive Picquart!” and I recognise him too, from the surveillance photographs that used to cross my desk, as Mathieu Dreyfus. Indeed, as I go round shaking their hands, I find I know all these men by sight or by reputation: the publisher Georges Charpentier, whose house this is; the heavily bearded senator for the Seine, Arthur Ranc, the oldest man in the room; Joseph Reinach, a left-wing Jewish member of the Chamber of Deputies; and of course the pudgy figure in pince-nez to whom I am introduced last, Émile Zola.
——
A fine lunch is served in the dining room, but I spend too much time talking to eat very much. I tell my fellow guests that I need to say my piece and leave; that every minute we spend together increases the chances that our meeting will be discovered. “Monsieur Charpentier may believe his servants are above acting as informants for the Sûreté, but regrettably experience has taught me otherwise.”
“It has certainly taught me,” adds Mathieu Dreyfus.
I bow to him. “My apologies for that.”
Opposite my place hangs a large portrait of Charpentier’s wife and children by Renoir, and from time to time as I recount my story my gaze wanders up to it and I experience that strange feeling of disconnection that can sometimes afflict me when I talk to a group of people. I tell them that they ought to take a look at a certain Colonel Armand du Paty de Clam, who was the officer who first interrogated Dreyfus and whose lurid imagination has shaped so much of the affair. I describe the methods of interrogation he used, which amounted almost to torture. And then there was my predecessor, Colonel Sandherr, a sick man who became convinced, wrongly, that the spy must be on the General Staff. I say that the greatest public misconception is that what was handed over to the Germans was of crucial military importance, whereas really it was the merest trivia. Yet the treatment of Dreyfus—the secret trial, the degradation, the imprisonment on Devil’s Island—has been so extreme the world has somehow become convinced that the very existence of France must have been at stake. “People say to one another, ‘There has to be more to it than meets the eye,’ when the truth is there is less. And the longer this scandal goes on, the more colossal and absurd becomes the discrepancy in size between the original crime and the monumental efforts to cover up the judicial error.”
At the far end of the table I see Zola taking notes. I pause for a sip of wine. One of the children in the Renoir is sitting on a large dog. The pattern of the dog’s fur echoes the colouring of Madame Charpentier’s dress, and thus what seems a natural pose is actually artfully contrived.
I go on. Without revealing classified information, I tell them how I discovered the real traitor, Esterhazy, more than twenty months ago, and how Boisdeffre and especially Billot were initially supportive of my inquiry, but then how completely they changed their view when they realised it would mean reopening the Dreyfus case. I recount my exile to Tunisia, the General Staff’s attempt to send me on a suicide mission, and the way they are using the forgeries and false testimony presented to General Pellieux’s inquiry to frame me just as they framed Dreyfus. “We have arrived at the ludicrous position, gentlemen, of the army being so determined to keep an innocent man imprisoned that they are actively helping the guilty man to evade punishment, and are perfectly willing to put me out of the way too—for good, if necessary.”
Zola says, “It’s fantastical! The most astonishing story there has ever been.”
Ranc says, “It makes one ashamed to be French.”
Clemenceau, who is also taking notes, says, without looking up, “So who are the senior members of the military hierarchy most culpable, Colonel Picquart, in your opinion?”
“Among the senior ranks I would pick out the five generals: Mercier, Boisdeffre, Gonse, Billot and now Pellieux, who is running a cover-up disguised as an inquiry.”
Mathieu Dreyfus interjects, “And what do you think will happen to you now, Colonel?”
I light a cigarette. “I would imagine,” I say, twirling the match and extinguishing it with as much nonchalance as I can summon, “that after Esterhazy is formally cleared of all charges, they will discharge me from the army and put me in prison.”
There is a muttering of disbelief around the table. Clemenceau says, “But surely even the General Staff wouldn’t be that stupid?”
“I fear they’ve trapped themselves in a position where their logic doesn’t leave them much alternative. If Esterhazy is innocent—as they are determined to find him, in order to avoid reopening the Dreyfus case—then it follows that the campaign against him is a wicked conspiracy; and as I am the one ultimately responsible for that campaign, I must be punished.”
Reinach says, “So what is it you would like us to do, Colonel?”
“That is not really for me to say. I’ve told you as much as I can, without disclosing national secrets. I can’t write an article or publish a book myself—I’m still subject to army discipline. What I do believe is that somehow this affair must be taken out of the jurisdiction of the military and elevated to a higher plane—the details need to be assembled into a coherent narrative, so that everything can be seen for the first time in its proper proportions.” I nod to the Renoir and then glance at Zola. “Reality must be transformed into a work of art, if you will.”
“It already is a work of art, Colonel,” he replies. “All that is required is an angle of attack.”
——
Before the hour is up, I stub out my cigarette and rise to my feet. “Excuse me, gentlemen, but I should be the first to leave. It would be better if everyone departed at intervals, perhaps of ten minutes? Please don’t get up.” I turn to Charpentier: “Is there a back way out of the house?”
“Yes,” he says, “there’s a garden gate. You can get down to it through the kitchen. I’ll take you myself.”
“I’ll fetch your things,” says Louis.
I make my way round the dining room shaking the hand of each man in turn. Mathieu covers mine with both of his. “My family and I cannot adequately express our gratitude to you, Colonel.”
There is something proprietorial about his warmth which makes me feel awkward, even chilly.
“You have no reason to thank me,” I reply. “I was simply obeying my conscience.”
The street outside is clear and I take advantage of the fact that I have temporarily shaken off my police tail to walk quickly along the boulevard Saint-Germain to the de Comminges house. I give my card to the footman and am shown into the library while he goes upstairs to announce me. A minute later the door is flung open and Blanche rushes in and flings her arms around me.
“Darling Georges!” she cries. “Do you realise you’re now the most famous person I know? We’re all in the drawing room having tea. Come along right now—I want to show you off!”
She tries to pull me after her, but I resist. “Is Aimery in?”
“Yes, and he’ll be thrilled to see you. Come upstairs. I insist.” She tugs at my hand again. “We want to hear everything!”
“Blanche,” I say gently, detaching her hand from my arm, “we need to talk in private, and I think perhaps Aimery should join us. Would you mind getting him?”
For the first time she sees that I am serious. She gives a nervous laugh. “Oh, Georges,” she says, “this is too ominous!” But she goes and fetches her brother.
Aimery saunters in, as young-looking as ever, wearing a well-cut grey suit and carrying two cups of tea. “Hello, Georges. I suppose if you won’t come to the samovar, the tea will have to come to you.”
And so the three of us sit by the fire, and while Aimery sips his tea and Blanche smokes one of her brightly coloured Turkish cigarettes, I describe how her name has been used on a fake telegram, almost certainly dreamed up by du Paty, sent to me in Tunisia. Her eyes gleam. She seems to think it a great adventure. Aimery, though, scents the danger at once.
“Why would du Paty use Blanche’s name?”
“Because she knows Germain Ducasse, and Ducasse worked for me on an intelligence operation against Esterhazy. And so it looks as though we’re all part of this imaginary ‘Jewish syndicate’ that is working to free Dreyfus.”
“It’s utterly ridiculous,” says Blanche through a mouthful of smoke. “No one will believe it for an instant.”
Aimery asks, “Why use Blanche’s name? I also know Ducasse. Why not use mine?” He sounds genuinely puzzled. He glances at me, and then at his sister. Neither of us can quite bring ourselves to meet his gaze. A few awkward seconds pass. Aimery is no fool. “Ah,” he says quietly, nodding slowly, “I see.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” exclaims Blanche irritably, “you’re worse than Father! What does it matter?”
Aimery, who is suddenly very tense and silent, folds his arms and stares hard at the carpet, leaving it to me to explain: “I’m afraid it does matter, Blanche, because you’re bound to be questioned about the telegrams, and then it’s certain to reach the newspapers, and there will be a scandal.”
“Let there be—”
Aimery interrupts her furiously: “Just be quiet, Blanche—for once! It doesn’t only concern you. It drags the whole family into the mess! Think of your mother. And don’t forget I’m a serving officer!” He turns to me. “We’ll need to talk to our lawyers.”
“Of course.”
“In the meantime, I think it would be better if you didn’t come to this house or make any attempt to contact my sister.”
Blanche appeals to him: “Aimery …”
I stand to leave. “I understand.”
“I’m sorry, Georges,” says Aimery. “That’s just the way it has to be.”
Christmas and the New Year pass, the former spent with the Gasts in Ville-d’Avray, the latter with Anna and Jules in the rue Cassette; Pauline stays in the south. I sell my Erard piano to a dealer for five thousand francs and send her the money.
Esterhazy’s court-martial is fixed for Monday, 10 January 1898. I am summoned to appear as a witness; so is Louis. But on the Friday before the hearing, his father finally succumbs to his long illness and dies in Strasbourg; Louis is excused to go home to his family.
“I don’t know what I should do,” he says.
“My dear friend,” I reply, “there is no doubt about it. Go and be with your family.”
“But the trial … You’ll be alone …”
“Frankly, it will make no difference to the outcome whether you are there or not. Go.”
On Monday, in the predawn darkness, I rise early, don the pale blue tunic of the 4th Tunisian Rifles, pin on the ribbon of the Legion of Honour, and, trailed by a pair of plainclothes police agents, make the familiar journey across Paris to the military court building in the rue Cherche-Midi.
The day is hostile from the start: cold, grey, spitting rain. In the street between the prison and the courthouse a dozen gendarmes stand dripping in their caps and capes, but there are no crowds for them to control. I walk over the slippery cobbled forecourt into the same bleak ex-nunnery in which Dreyfus was tried more than three years ago. A captain of the Republican Guard shows me into a holding room for witnesses. I am the first to arrive. It is a small whitewashed chamber with a single barred window set above head height, a flagstone floor and hard wooden chairs ranged around the sides. A coal-burner in the corner barely suffices to take the edge off the chill. Above it is a picture of Christ with a glowing index finger raised in benediction.
A few minutes later the door opens and Lauth sticks his blond head around the corner. I see from his uniform he has been promoted to major. He takes one look at me and hastily withdraws. Five minutes later he comes back in with Gribelin and they go over to the corner furthest away from me. They don’t look once in my direction. Why are they here? I wonder. Then two more of my former officers show up. The same procedure: straight past me and into the corner huddle. Du Paty marches through the door as if he expects a band to strike up a tune at his entrance, whereas Gonse sidles in, smoking his inevitable cigarette. All keep their backs to me except for Henry, who enters loudly, banging the door, and nods as he passes.
“You have a good colour, Colonel,” he says cheerfully. “It must be all that African sunshine!”
“And yours must be all that cognac.”
He roars with laughter and goes to sit with the others.
Gradually the room fills up with witnesses. My old friend Major Curé of the 74th Infantry Regiment carefully ignores me. I recognise the Vice President of the Senate, Auguste Scheurer-Kestner, who offers me his hand and murmurs quietly, “Well done.” Mathieu Dreyfus enters with a slim, quiet, dark-haired young woman on his arm, dressed entirely in widow’s black. She seems so young I assume she must be his daughter, but then he introduces her: “This is Madame Lucie Dreyfus, Alfred’s wife. Lucie, this is Colonel Picquart.” She gives me a faint smile of recognition but doesn’t say anything, and nor do I. I feel uncomfortable, remembering those intimate, passionate letters of hers—Live for me, I entreat you … On the other side of the room du Paty eyes her keenly through his monocle and whispers something to Lauth: there was a story that he made a pass at her when he went to search her apartment after Dreyfus was arrested; I can believe it.
And so we sit, the military on one side of the room and I with the civilians, listening to the sounds of the proceedings getting under way above us: the thump of feet climbing the stairs, the cry of “Present arms!” as the judges arrive, and then a long interval of silence during which we wait for news. Eventually the clerk of the court appears and announces that the civil suits brought by the Dreyfus family have been rejected, and that therefore there will be no reconsideration of the original court-martial verdict, which stands. Also, the judges have voted by a majority that all the evidence given by military personnel will be heard in secret. Thus we have lost the battle before it even starts. With a practised stoicism, Lucie rises, expressionless, embraces Mathieu and leaves.
Another hour passes, during which presumably Esterhazy is being questioned, and then the clerk returns and calls, “Monsieur Mathieu Dreyfus!” As the original complainant against Esterhazy to the Minister of War, he has the privilege of going first. He does not return. Forty-five minutes later Scheurer-Kestner is called. He does not return either. In this way the room gradually empties of its various handwriting experts and officers until at last, in the middle of the afternoon, Gonse and the men of the Statistical Section are all summoned en bloc. They file out, every one of them avoiding eye contact, except for Gonse, who at the last minute pauses on the threshold to look back at me. I cannot fathom his expression. Is it hatred, pity, bafflement, regret, or all of these? Or is it that he just wants to carry one last image of me in his mind before I disappear for ever? He stares for several seconds, and then he turns on his heel and the door closes, leaving me alone.
For several hours I wait, occasionally standing to pace the room to try to keep myself warm. More than ever, I wish Louis were with me. If I had any doubts of it before, I have none now: this is not Esterhazy’s court-martial; it is mine.
By the time the clerk comes to fetch me, it is dark. Upstairs the court has been cleared of all civilians apart from the various lawyers. There are no outsiders. The atmosphere, in contrast to the freezing waiting room, is warm from the closely packed male bodies, almost clubbable; there is a drifting fug of tobacco smoke. Gonse, Henry, Lauth and the other officers of the Statistical Section watch me as I approach the judges’ bench. Behind General Luxer, who is the president of the court, sits Pellieux, of all people; and there to my left is Esterhazy, lounging back more or less as I remember him on the only other occasion I saw him, with his feet stretched out and his arms hanging loosely at his sides, as relaxed as if he were still in the nightclub in Rouen. I have time only for a sidelong glance, but I am struck again by the singularity of his appearance. The bald, oddly delicate round head cranes up to look at me; a glittering eye, like a falcon’s, focuses on me for an instant and then flickers away. He appears bored.
Luxer says, “State your name.”
“Marie-Georges Picquart.”
“Place of birth?”
“Strasbourg.”
“Age?”
“Forty-three.”
“When did the defendant first come to your attention?”
“About nine months after I was appointed chief of the secret intelligence section of the General Staff …”
In all, I testify for perhaps four hours—an hour or so in the darkness of that late January afternoon and three hours the following morning. Pointless to relate it all: it is Pellieux redux. Indeed, Pellieux himself, in defiance of all the rules of procedure, seems to be in control of the court-martial. He leans forward to whisper advice to the president of the judges. He asks me hectoring questions. And whenever I try to bring up the names of Mercier, Boisdeffre and Billot, he interrupts me and orders me to be silent: “These distinguished officers have no relevance whatever to the case of Major Esterhazy!” His methods are so heavy-handed that halfway through the Tuesday morning session one of the judges asks the president of the court to intervene: “I see that Colonel Picquart is the true defendant here. I request that he be permitted to present all the explanations necessary to his defence.”
Pellieux scowls and briefly falls silent, but Esterhazy’s slippery young advocate, Maurice Tézenas, quickly takes over the attack: “Colonel Picquart, you have sought from the beginning to substitute my client for Dreyfus.”
“That is not true.”
“You forged the petit bleu.”
“No.”
“You conspired with your attorney, Maître Leblois, to blacken my client’s name.”
“No.”
“You showed him the secret file relating to the conviction of Dreyfus as part of a plot to undermine public confidence in the original verdict.”
“I did not.”
“Come now, Colonel—several witnesses yesterday testified to this very court that they saw you do it!”
“That is impossible. What witnesses?”
“Colonel Henry, Major Lauth and Monsieur Gribelin.”
I glance across the room to where they sit, impassive. “Well, they are mistaken.”
Tézenas says, “I request that these officers step forward and confront this witness.”
“Gentlemen, if you please.” Luxer beckons to them to approach the bench. Esterhazy watches with an air of utter indifference, as if he is attending a particularly tedious play, the ending of which he already knows. Luxer says, “Colonel Henry, is there any doubt in your mind that you saw Colonel Picquart show documents from the so-called secret dossier to Maître Leblois?”
“No, General. I went into his office late one afternoon about a departmental matter and he had the file on his desk. I recognised it at once because it has the initial letter ‘D’ on it, which I wrote there myself. The colonel had it open and was showing a particular document, containing the words ‘that lowlife D,’ to his friend Monsieur Leblois. I saw it all, as plain as I see you now, General.”
I look at him in amazement: how is it possible to lie so brazenly? He stares back at me, entirely unfazed.
You order me to shoot a man and I’ll shoot him …
Luxer continues: “And so your testimony, Colonel Henry, is that you then went away and immediately described what you had seen to Major Lauth and Monsieur Gribelin?”
“I did. I was profoundly shocked by the whole thing.”
“And the two of you both still swear this conversation took place?”
Lauth says fervently, “Yes, General.”
“Absolutely, General,” confirms Gribelin. He darts a glance at me. “I might add that I, too, saw Colonel Picquart show the file to his friend.”
They have come to hate me, I realise, far more than they ever hated Dreyfus. I maintain my composure. “May I ask, Monsieur President, if Maître Leblois could come and give his opinion of this?”
Tézenas says, “I’m afraid, Monsieur President, that Maître Leblois is in Strasbourg.”
“No,” I say. “He returned late last night, accompanying the body of his father. He is waiting downstairs.”
Tézenas shrugs. “Is he? My apologies: I did not know.”
Louis is fetched. For a man in mourning, he is remarkably collected. Questioned about the meeting and the dossier, he confirms that there was no such meeting, no such file, “except for some nonsense about pigeons.” He turns to the bench. “Could the court ask Colonel Henry when this incident is alleged to have occurred?”
Luxer gestures to Henry, who says, “Yes, it was in September ’96.”
“Well that is quite impossible,” replies Louis, “because my father first fell ill in ’96 and I was in Strasbourg the entire period from August to November of that year. I am quite sure of this—indeed I can prove it, because it was a condition of my visa that I had to report daily to the German authorities throughout my stay.”
Luxer says, “Is it possible that you have made a mistake about the dates, Colonel Henry?”
Henry makes a pantomime of thinking this over, weighing his head from side to side. “Yes, I suppose it’s possible. It could have been sooner than that. Or perhaps it could have been later.”
“Or it could have been never at all,” I say, “because I didn’t take possession of the secret file until August, as Monsieur Gribelin can attest: it was he who retrieved it for me from Henry’s desk. And in October, General Gonse over there”—I point to him—“took the file away from me again. So this entire incident simply could not have happened.”
For the first time Henry stumbles, looks flustered. “Well, I’m not sure … I can only repeat what I saw …”
Pellieux comes to his rescue. “If I might make an observation, Monsieur President, at more than a year’s distance it is quite difficult to give a precise date …”
Luxer agrees. The session moves on. At lunchtime I am allowed to stand down.
Esterhazy’s lawyer takes five hours to make his closing speech. The hearing continues until eight o’clock at night. At one point during his advocate’s monologue Esterhazy seems to nod off, the bald cranium tilting back. When at last the judges rise to consider their verdict, he is led away past me, and gives me a stiff salute containing more than a hint of mockery. Mathieu Dreyfus, who has returned for the verdict and is sitting next to me, mutters, “What a rogue!” I get up with Louis to stretch my legs. I assume we will have several hours to wait. But less than five minutes later comes the cry of “Present arms!” and the doors reopen. The judges troop back in and the clerk reads out the verdict. “In the name of the people of France … the council declares unanimously … the accused is innocent … he leaves the court without a stain upon his honour …”
The rest of his words are lost in the volley of applause that cannonades around the stone walls. My brother officers stamp their feet. They clap. They cheer: “Vive l’armée!” “Vive la France!” and even “Death to the Jews!” The outcome was predetermined. I should not be shocked. And yet there are limits to how well the imagination can prepare one for disaster. As Mathieu and I make our way out of the courtroom, pursued by jeers and insults—“Death to the syndicate!” “Death to Picquart!”—I feel as if I have tumbled deep into some mineshaft from which it will be impossible to clamber back. All is darkness—indeed, Dreyfus is actually worse off than he was six months ago, for he has now been doubly condemned. It is impossible to imagine the army holding a third hearing.
Outside, beyond the murkily lit courtyard, a crowd of more than a thousand has gathered, despite the cold. They are clapping rhythmically and chanting their hero’s name: “Es-ter-hazy! Es-ter-hazy!” All I want to do is get away. I walk towards the gate, but Louis and Mathieu restrain me. Louis says, “You mustn’t go out there yet, Georges. Your picture has been in the papers. You’ll be lynched.”
At that moment Esterhazy comes out of the court building, escorted by his lawyer, Henry and du Paty and followed by an applauding retinue of black-uniformed soldiers. Esterhazy’s face is transfigured, almost luminous with triumph. He wears a cape which he sweeps up onto his shoulder in a gesture of imperial magnificence, then steps out into the street. A terrific cheer goes up. Hands stretch out to pat his back. Someone shouts, “Hats off to the martyr of the Jews!”
Mathieu touches me on the arm. “Now we should go.” He takes off his overcoat and helps me put it on over my distinctive tunic. With my head down and with him on one side of me and Louis on the other, I push my way out into the rue Cherche-Midi and turn in the opposite direction to Esterhazy, moving quickly along the wet pavement towards the distant traffic.
The next day is the funeral of Louis’s father, Georges-Louis Leblois. A Lutheran pastor, a believer in scientific progress, a radical thinker who denied the divinity of Christ, the old man wished to be cremated. However, no such facilities exist in Strasbourg, therefore the ceremony has to take place in Paris at the new crematorium of Père-Lachaise. The silence of the immense cemetery, with its shaded alleys, and the grey city in the plain below reaching towards the blue hills on the horizon make a profound impression on me. The mourners come up to me to commiserate on the previous day’s verdict, shaking my hand and speaking in low tones, so that it almost feels as if I am the one who has died and I am attending my own obsequies.
While this is going on, I discover later, General Billot is signing my arrest warrant, and when I return to my apartment I find a notification that I will be taken into custody the next day.
They come for me just before dawn. I am already dressed in civilian clothes, my suitcase packed. An elderly colonel, accompanied by a private soldier, knocks on my door and shows me a copy of the warrant from General Billot: Colonel Picquart has been investigated for a serious breach of professional duties. He has committed grave errors in his service, contrary to army discipline. Therefore I have decided that he is to be held under arrest in the fortress of Mont-Valérien, until further orders.
The colonel says, “Sorry to call so early, but we thought we’d try to avoid these ghastly newspaper people. May I take your service revolver, please?”
The manager of the building, Monsieur Reigneau, who lives several doors along the street, comes to see what all the noise is about. I pass him with my escort on the stairs. Afterwards he reveals to Le Figaro my parting words: “You see what is happening to me. But I am quite calm. You will have read in the papers all that they say about me. Continue to believe that I am an honest man.”
Drawn up outside is a large military carriage harnessed to two white horses. There has been a hard frost overnight. It is still dark. A red lamp from the building works opposite gleams faintly on the frozen puddles. The private takes my suitcase and clambers up next to the driver while the colonel politely opens the door and allows me to go first into the carriage. Nobody is in the street to witness my disgrace, apart from Reigneau. We turn left into the rue Copernic and head towards the place Victor Hugo. There are a few early risers queuing to buy newspapers on the corner of the roundabout, and even more further along at the kiosk on the place de L’Étoile. As we pass I catch a glimpse of a huge banner headline, “J’Accuse …!” and I say to the colonel, “If a condemned man is allowed a final request, do you think we might stop for a newspaper?”
“A newspaper?” The colonel looks at me as if I am mad. “Well, I suppose so, if you must.”
He calls up to the driver to pull over. I get out and walk back towards the vendor. The private soldier trails behind me at a discreet distance; ahead the sky is just beginning to lighten above the avenue du Bois de Boulogne, silhouetting the bare tops of the trees. The paper everyone is queuing to buy is Clemenceau’s L’Aurore, and the headline, spread across the top of all six columns, is:
J’Accuse…!
LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC
BY ÉMILE ZOLA
I join the queue to buy a copy and walk slowly back towards the carriage. There is just enough light from the streetlamps for me to make it out. The piece takes up the entire front page, thousands of words of polemic, cast in the form of a letter to President Fauré (Knowing your integrity, I am convinced that you are unaware of the truth…). I skim it with increasing astonishment.
Can you believe that for the last year General Billot, Generals Gonse and Boisdeffre have known that Dreyfus is innocent, and they have kept this terrible knowledge to themselves? And these people sleep at night, and have wives and children they love!
Colonel Picquart carried out his duty as an honest man. He kept insisting to his superiors in the name of justice. He even begged them, telling them how impolitic it was to temporise in the face of the terrible storm that was brewing and that would break when the truth became known. But no! The crime had been committed and the General Staff could no longer admit to it. And so Colonel Picquart was sent away on official duty. He got sent further and further away until he landed in Tunisia, where they tried eventually to reward his courage with an assignment that would certainly have seen him massacred.
I come to a halt in the middle of the pavement.
And the astounding outcome of this appalling situation was that the one decent man involved, Colonel Picquart, who alone had done his duty, was to become the victim, the one who got ridiculed and punished. O justice, what horrible despair grips our hearts? It was even claimed that he himself was the forger, that he had fabricated the letter-telegram in order to destroy Esterhazy. Yes! We have before us the ignoble spectacle of men who are sunken in debts and crimes being hailed as innocent, whereas the honour of a man whose life is spotless is being vilely attacked. A society that sinks to that level has fallen into decay.
Behind me the soldier says, “We really ought to be going, Colonel, if you don’t mind.”
“Yes, of course. Just let me finish this.”
I flick through to the end.
I accuse Colonel du Paty de Clam of being the diabolical creator of this miscarriage of justice …
I accuse General Mercier of complicity, at least by mental weakness, in one of the greatest inequities of the century.
I accuse General Billot of having held in his hands absolute proof of Dreyfus’s innocence and concealing it, thereby making himself guilty of crimes against mankind and justice …
I accuse General Boisdeffre and General Gonse of complicity in the same crime …
I accuse General Pellieux of conducting a fraudulent inquiry …
I accuse the three handwriting experts …
I accuse the Ministry of War …
I accuse the first court-martial of violating the law by convicting the accused on the basis of evidence that was kept secret, and I accuse the second court-martial of knowingly acquitting a guilty man in obedience to orders …
In making these accusations I am aware that I am making myself liable to a punishable offence of libel …
Let them dare to bring me before a court of law and investigate in the full light of day!
I am waiting.
With my deepest respect,
Monsieur President,
Émile Zola
I fold up the paper and clamber back into the carriage.
The elderly colonel says, “Anything interesting?” Without waiting for my reply he adds: “I didn’t think so. There never is.” He thumps the roof of the carriage. “Drive on!”