Mont-Valérien is a huge square-fronted fortress on the western edge of the city, part of the ring of defensive garrisons around Paris. I am escorted up a winding staircase to the third floor of a wing reserved for officers. I am the only prisoner. Day or night there is little to hear in winter except the wind moaning around the battlements. My door is kept locked at all times; a sentry guards the foot of the stairs. I have a small sitting room, a bedroom and a lavatory. The barred windows offer panoramic views across the Seine and the Bois de Boulogne to the Eiffel Tower, eight kilometres to the east.
If my enemies on the General Staff imagine that this represents some kind of hardship for me, they are mistaken. I have a bed and a chair, pen and paper, and plenty of books—Goethe, Heine, Ibsen. Proust kindly sends me his collected writings, Les Plaisirs et les Jours; my sister a new French–Russian dictionary. What more does a man want? I am imprisoned and I am liberated. The solitary burden of secrecy that I have carried all these months has been lifted.
Two days after my arrival the government is obliged to accept the challenge that Zola has thrown down to it, and lodges a charge against him of criminal libel. This will have to be heard not in secret, in some poky chamber controlled by the army, but in public in the Court of Assize inside the Palace of Justice. The case is pushed to the top of the waiting list so that the trial can start as soon as possible. The fortress commander refuses to allow visits from anyone who is not a serving officer, but even he can’t prevent me from seeing my lawyer. Louis brings me the subpoena. I am summoned to give evidence on Friday, 11 February.
I study it. “What will happen if Zola is found guilty?”
We are sitting in the visitors’ room: bars on the windows, two plain wooden chairs and a wooden table; a guard stands outside the door and pretends not to listen.
Louis says, “He’ll go to prison for a year.”
“It was a brave thing he did.”
“It was a damned brave thing,” agrees Louis. “I only wish he’d tempered his bravery with a little prudence. But he got carried away and couldn’t resist putting in this sentence at the end about the Esterhazy court-martial—‘I accuse them of knowingly acquitting a guilty man in obedience to orders’—and it’s for that the government are going after him.”
“Not for his accusations against Boisdeffre and the others?”
“No, all that they ignore. Their intention is to restrict the trial to this one tiny issue on which they can be certain of winning. It also means that anything to do with Dreyfus will be ruled inadmissible unless it relates strictly to the Esterhazy court-martial.”
“So we’ll lose again?”
“There are occasions when losing is a victory, so long as there is a fight.”
In the Ministry of War they are clearly nervous about what I might say. A few days before the trial an old comrade of mine, Colonel Bailloud, comes out to Mont-Valérien to “try to talk some sense” into me. He waits until we are in the yard, where I am allowed to take exercise for two hours each day, before delivering his message.
“I am empowered to tell you,” he says pompously, “on the highest authority, that if you show some discretion, your career will not suffer.”
“If I keep my mouth shut, you mean?”
“ ‘Discretion’ was the word that was used.”
My first response is to laugh. “This is from Gonse, I take it?”
“I prefer not to say.”
“Well, you can tell him from me that I haven’t forgotten I’m still a soldier and that I’ll do my best to reconcile my duty of confidentiality with my obligations as a witness. Is that sufficient? Now clear off back to Paris, there’s a good fellow, and let me walk in peace.”
On the appointed day I am taken by military carriage to the Palace of Justice on the Île de la Cité, wearing my uniform as a Tunisian rifleman. I have given my word that I won’t attempt to leave the precincts of the palace and will return to Mont-Valérien with my gaolers at the end of the day’s session. As a quid pro quo I am allowed to walk into the building freely, without an escort. In the boulevard du Palais there is an anti-Semitic demonstration. “Death to the Jews!” “Death to the traitors!” “Yids to the water!” My face is recognised, perhaps from some of the vile caricatures that have appeared in La Libre Parole and similar rags, and a few ruffians break away from the rest and try to pursue me into the courtyard and up the steps of the palace, but they are stopped by the gendarmes. I can understand why Mathieu Dreyfus has announced he will not be attending the court.
The high vaulted hall of the palace, ablaze on this dull February day with electric light, is crowded and noisy like the concourse of some fantastical railway station: clerks and court messengers hurrying with legal documents, lawyers in their black robes gossiping and consulting with their clients, anxious plaintiffs and defendants, witnesses, gendarmes, reporters, army officers, poor people seeking shelter from the winter cold, ladies and gentlemen of high fashion who have managed to acquire a ticket to the Zola sensation—the whole of society throngs the Salle des Pas-Perdus and the endless Galerie des Prisonniers. Bells ring. Shouts and footsteps echo on the marble. I pass more or less unnoticed apart from the occasional nudge and stare. I find my way to the witness room and give my name to the usher. Half an hour later I am called.
First impressions of the Assize Court: size and grandeur, space, heavy wooden panelling and gleaming brass fixtures, the density of the crowd, the buzz of their conversation, the silence that falls as I walk up the aisle, my boots clicking on the parquet floor, through the little wooden gate in the railing that separates the judge and jury from the spectators, towards the semicircular bar of the witness stand in the well of the court.
“Will the witness state his name?”
“Marie-Georges Picquart.”
“Place of residence?”
“Mont-Valérien.”
That draws a laugh, and I have a moment to take my bearings: to one side of me the box of twelve jurors, all of them ordinary tradesmen; high on his bench the big round-faced judge, Delegorgue, in his scarlet robes; beneath him a dozen lawyers in their priestlike black vestments, including the Advocate General, Van Cassel, leading for the government; seated at a table Zola, who gives me an encouraging nod, as does his co-defendant, Perrenx, manager of L’Aurore; alongside them their counsel—Fernand Labori for Zola, Albert Clemenceau for Perrenx, and Georges Clemenceau, who has somehow gained permission to sit with his brother, even though he is not a lawyer; and behind me, like the congregation in a church, the spectators, including a solid block of dark-uniformed officers, among them Gonse, Pellieux, Henry, Lauth and Gribelin.
Labori rises. He is a young giant, tall and broad, blond-haired and -bearded—a piratical figure: “the Viking,” as he is known, famous for his combative style. He says, “Will Colonel Picquart tell us what he knows of the Esterhazy case, of the investigation that he made, and of the circumstances that accompanied or followed his departure from the Ministry of War?”
He sits.
I grip the wooden rail of the witness stand to stop my hands shaking and take a breath. “In the spring of 1896, the fragments of a letter-telegram fell into my hands …”
I speak uninterruptedly for more than an hour, pausing occasionally to take sips of water. I draw on my training as a lecturer at the war school. I try to imagine I am teaching a particularly complicated lesson in topography. I don’t use notes. Also I am determined to keep my composure—to be polite, precise, unemotional—not to betray any secrets, nor to indulge in personal attacks. I confine myself to the overwhelming case against Esterhazy: the evidence of the petit bleu, his immoral character, his need for money, his suspicious interest in artillery matters, the fact that his handwriting matches that of the bordereau. I describe how I took my suspicions to my superiors and ended up being sent to North Africa, and the machinations that have been launched against me since. The packed courtroom listens to me in complete silence. I can feel my words striking home. The faces of the General Staff officers, when I happen to turn and catch them, look grimmer by the minute.
At the end, Labori questions me. “Does the witness think that these machinations were the work of Major Esterhazy alone, or does he think that Major Esterhazy had accomplices?”
I take my time replying. “I believe that he had accomplices.”
“Accomplices inside the Ministry of War?”
“There certainly must have been one accomplice who was familiar with what was going on in the Ministry of War.”
“Which in your opinion was the more damaging evidence against Major Esterhazy—the bordereau or the petit bleu?”
“The bordereau.”
“Did you say as much to General Gonse?”
“I did.”
“Then how could General Gonse instruct you to separate the Dreyfus case from the Esterhazy case?”
“I can only tell you what he said.”
“But if Major Esterhazy is the author of the bordereau, the charge against Dreyfus falls?”
“Yes—that is why to me it never made sense to separate them.”
The judge intervenes. “Do you remember sending for Maître Leblois to call on you at your office?”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember the date?”
“He came in the spring of ’96. I wanted his advice on the issue of carrier pigeons.”
“Monsieur Gribelin,” says the judge, “will you step forward? This is not your recollection, I believe?”
I half turn to watch Gribelin rise from his place among the General Staff. He comes to join me at the front of the court. He doesn’t look in my direction.
“No, Monsieur President. One evening in October ’96 I went into Colonel Picquart’s office to get leave of absence. He was sitting at his desk with the carrier pigeon file to his right and the secret file to his left.”
The judge looks at me. I say politely, “Monsieur Gribelin is mistaken. Either his memory fails him or he has confused the files.”
Gribelin’s body stiffens. “Believe what I say: I saw it.”
I smile at him, determined to keep control of my temper. “But I say that you did not see it.”
The judge interjects: “Colonel Picquart, did you once ask Monsieur Gribelin to stamp a letter?”
“To stamp a letter?”
“To stamp a letter, not with the date of its arrival, but with an earlier date?”
“No.”
Gribelin says sarcastically, “Colonel, let me refresh your memory. You returned to your office one afternoon at two o’clock. You sent for me, and as you were taking off your overcoat, you said: ‘Gribelin, could you get the post office to stamp a letter?’ ”
“I have no such recollection.”
The judge says, “But surely you made the same request of Major Lauth?”
“Never.” I shake my head. “Never, never.”
“Major Lauth, would you come forward, please?”
Lauth rises from his place next to Henry and comes to join us. Staring straight ahead, as if on parade, he says, “Colonel Picquart asked me to remove all traces of tearing from the petit bleu. He said, ‘Do you think we could get this stamped by the post office?’ He also said that I should testify that I recognised the handwriting on the petit bleu as being that of a certain foreign gentleman. But I said to him, ‘I never saw this handwriting before.’ ”
I look at the pair of them: clearly years of running spies has made facile liars of them both. I grit my teeth. “But this was a document torn into sixty pieces,” I say, “fastened together by adhesive strips on the side where the address was written. How could a stamp have been put on that? It would have looked ridiculous.”
Neither answers.
Labori is on his feet again. He hitches up his robes and says to Lauth, “You write in your deposition that Colonel Picquart could very easily have added the petit bleu to the cone of unprocessed intelligence material waiting in his safe—in other words, that it is a fabrication.”
“That is true. He could.”
“But you don’t have any proof?”
“Nevertheless, I believe he did it.”
“Colonel Picquart?”
“Major Lauth may believe it, but that doesn’t make it true.”
The judge says, “Let us go back to the incident with the secret file. Colonel Henry, would you approach the witness?”
Now Henry heaves himself to his feet and comes forward. Close up, I can see he is in an agitated state, flushed and sweating. All three of them seem to be under great strain. It is one thing to repeat their lies in a small and secret military court; it is quite another to do it here. They can never have expected this. He says, “It was in October, I think. I’ve never been able to fix the date precisely. All I know is that there was an open file in the room. The colonel was sitting down, and at his left sat Monsieur Leblois, and before them on the desk were several files, among them the secret file, which I had labelled with blue pencil. The envelope was open, and the document in question—the one with the words ‘that lowlife D’—was outside it.”
The judge says, “Colonel Picquart, what have you to say?”
“I repeat that I never had the file on my desk in the presence of Maître Leblois, either open or closed. In any case, it would have been impossible for this incident to have occurred as Colonel Henry describes it, because Maître Leblois can prove that he didn’t return to Paris until November the seventh.”
Henry blusters, “Well I say it was October. I’ve always said October, and I can’t say anything else.”
I ask the judge, “May I question Colonel Henry?” He gestures for me to go ahead, and I say to Henry, “Tell me, did you enter my office by the door opposite the desk, or by the little side door?”
After a slight hesitation he says, “By the main door.”
“And about how far into the office did you come?”
“Not far. I can’t say exactly whether it was just half a pace or a full one.”
“But whichever it was, you must have been on the other side of my desk—that is, on the side opposite to where I was sitting. So how could you have seen the document?”
“I saw the document perfectly.”
“But the writing on that document is very murky even if it’s directly beneath your eyes. How could you possibly have made it out at such a distance?”
“Listen, Colonel,” he replies, still trying to bluff his way out of it, “I know that document better than anyone and I would certainly recognise it at a distance of ten paces. There’s no question about it. Let me say it bluntly once and for all. You want the light? You shall have it!” He points at me and turns to the jury. “Colonel Picquart is lying!”
He delivers the line in exactly the same theatrical tone and with the same gesture of accusation that he used at the Dreyfus court-martial: The traitor is that man! There is a gasp in the courtroom and in that instant I forget my vow to keep my cool. Henry has just called me a liar. I turn on him and raise my hand to silence him. “You do not have the right to say that! I shall demand satisfaction for that remark!”
There is noise all around me now—some applause, some jeers, as the realisation spreads that I have just challenged Henry to a duel. Henry looks at me in surprise. The judge gavels for order but I am barely listening. I can control myself no longer. All the frustrations of the past year and a half burst forth. “Gentlemen of the jury, you have seen here men like Colonel Henry, Major Lauth, and the keeper of the archives, Gribelin, make the most foul accusations against me. You’ve just heard Colonel Henry call me a liar. You’ve heard Major Lauth, without a shred of proof, suggest I invented the petit bleu. Well, gentlemen, do you want to know why this is happening? All the architects of the Dreyfus affair …”
“Colonel!” warns the judge.
“… that is, Colonel Henry and Monsieur Gribelin, aided by Colonel du Paty de Clam, at the direction of General Gonse, are covering up the mistakes that were made under my predecessor, Colonel Sandherr. He was a sick man, already suffering from the paralysis that killed him, and they have gone on covering up for him ever since—perhaps out of some misplaced sense of loyalty, perhaps for the sake of the department: I don’t know. And shall I tell you what my crime really was, in their eyes? It was to believe that there was a better way of defending our honour than blind obedience. And because of that, for months now, insults have been heaped upon me by newspapers that are paid for spreading slander and lies.”
Zola cries out, “That’s right!” The judge is gavelling me to stop. I press on.
“For months I have been in the most horrible situation that any officer can occupy—assailed in my honour, and unable to defend myself. And tomorrow perhaps I shall be thrown out of this army that I love, and to which I have given twenty-five years of my life. Well then—so be it! I still believe it was my duty to seek truth and justice. I believe that is the best way for any soldier to serve the army, and I also believe it was my duty as an honest man.” I turn back to the judge and add quietly, “That is all I want to say.”
Behind me there is some applause and a lot of jeering. A lone voice calls out, “Vive Picquart!”
That night, to avoid the mob, I have to be smuggled out of a side door on to the quai des Orfèvres. The sky above the palace is the colour of blood, flecked with drifting sparks, and when we turn the corner we can see that on the embankment on the other side of the Seine a crowd of several hundred are burning books—Zola’s books, I discover afterwards, together with any journals they can lay their hands on that are sympathetic to Dreyfus. There is something pagan about the way the figures seem to dance around the flames above the darkness of the river. The gendarmes have to force a way through for our carriage. The horses shy; the driver has to fight to bring them under control. We cross the river and have barely travelled a hundred metres along the boulevard de Sébastapol when we hear the cascading sound of plate glass shattering and a mob comes running down the centre of the street. A man yells, “Down with the Jews!” Moments later we pass a shop with its windows smashed and paint daubed across a storefront sign that reads Levy & Dreyfus.
——
The next day when I return to the Palace of Justice, I am taken not to the Assize Court but to a different part of the building, and questioned by a magistrate, Paul Bertulus, about the forged messages I received in Tunisia. He is a big, handsome, charming man in his middle forties, appointed to the task by General Billot. He has an upturned moustache and a red carnation in his buttonhole and looks as if he would be more at home watching the racing at Longchamps than sitting here. I know him by reputation to be a conservative, a royalist and a friend of Henry’s, which presumably is why he was given the task. Therefore I have the very lowest expectations of his diligence as an investigator. Instead, to my surprise, the more I describe what befell me in North Africa, the more obviously disturbed he becomes.
“So let me be clear, Colonel. You are quite certain that Mademoiselle Blanche de Comminges did not send you these telegrams?”
“Without doubt her name has only been dragged into this affair by Colonel du Paty.”
“And why would he do that?”
I glance at the stenographer who is recording my evidence. “I would be willing to tell you that, Monsieur Bertulus, but only in confidence.”
“That is not a regular procedure, Colonel.”
“This is not a regular matter.”
The magistrate thinks about it. “Very well,” he says eventually. “However, you must understand that I may have to act on what you tell me, whether you want me to or not.”
I have an instinct that I can trust him and so I agree, and after the stenographer has left the room I tell him the story of du Paty’s liaison with Blanche, replete with the detail of the stolen letter allegedly returned by a woman wearing a veil. “That is why I say du Paty must be behind it in some way or other. His imagination is lurid but restricted. I am sure that he is the one who gave Esterhazy this device from romantic fiction about a ‘veiled lady’ who is somehow known to me.”
“It’s barely credible.”
“I agree. But you can see how devastating it would be to Mademoiselle de Comminges’s position in society if the full details ever became known.”
“So you are suggesting Colonel du Paty is a direct link between Major Esterhazy’s allegations and an officially sanctioned conspiracy against you involving forged messages?”
“I am.”
“Is forgery a method commonly employed by the intelligence department?”
I have to suppress a smile at his naïvety. “There’s an officer who works for the Sûreté—Jean-Alfred Desvernine. He once brought a forger to see me with the pseudonym of Lemercier-Picard. I suggest you have a word with Desvernine. He might be able to help.”
Bertulus makes a note of the name and then calls the stenographer back into the room.
That afternoon, while I am still being deposed, there is a quick knock at the door and Louis puts his head into the room. He is sweating, out of breath. “Forgive my intrusion,” he says to Bertulus, “but Colonel Picquart is needed urgently in court.”
“I am afraid he is in the process of giving evidence to me.”
“I appreciate that, and Maître Labori sends his apologies, but he really does need to call the colonel as a rebuttal witness.”
“Well, if he must, he must.”
As we hurry along the corridor Louis says, “General Pellieux is on the witness stand and trying to destroy your evidence. He is claiming that Esterhazy couldn’t possibly have written the bordereau because he didn’t have access to that level of intelligence.”
“But that’s nonsense,” I say. “I dealt with all this yesterday. And anyway, what has it to do with Pellieux? Why isn’t Gonse handling that part of their case, or Henry?”
“Haven’t you noticed? They now have Pellieux doing everything. He’s the only decent spokesman they’ve got, and he isn’t tainted like the others.” When we reach the doors of the courtroom he turns. “You do realise what this means, Georges, don’t you?”
“What?”
“They’re on the run. For the first time they’re actually scared they’re going to lose.”
Inside the court, Pellieux is at the witness stand and clearly just reaching his peroration, addressing the jury directly as if he were an advocate. Louis and I stand at the back to listen. “Gentlemen,” he cries, striking his breast, “I have a soldier’s soul, and it revolts against the infamies heaped upon us! I say that it is criminal to try to take away from the army its confidence in its chiefs. What do you imagine will become of this army on the day of danger—nearer, perhaps, than you think? What do you imagine will be the conduct of the poor soldiers led by chiefs of whom they have heard such things said? It is to butchery that they would lead your sons, gentlemen of the jury! But Monsieur Zola will have won a new battle, he will write a new Débâcle,* he will spread the French language throughout the universe and throughout a Europe from whose map France will have been wiped!”
The section of the court occupied by army officers erupts in cheers. Pellieux holds up a finger to silence them. “One word more, gentlemen. We should have been glad if Dreyfus had been acquitted three years ago. It would have proved there was no traitor in the French army. But what the recent court-martial was not willing to accept was that an innocent man should be put in Dreyfus’s place, whether Dreyfus was guilty or not.”
He stands down to renewed acclamation from the General Staff. I move forward towards the well of the court, past Gonse and Henry, who are both on their feet applauding. Pellieux struts back to his seat like a prizefighter who has just won a bout, and I stand aside to let him pass. His eyes are shining. He doesn’t even notice me until he draws level with me, and then he says out of the corner of his mouth as he goes by, “All yours.”
In the event, much to Labori’s irritation, the judge rules that it is too late in the day for me to be called and that my testimony will have to wait until the next session. I return to Mont-Valérien and pass a sleepless night, listening to the wind and staring long into the small hours at the light on top of the Eiffel Tower, glowing like a red planet in the heavens above Paris.
The next morning, once I am standing at the front of the court, Labori says, “Yesterday General de Pellieux declared that Major Esterhazy couldn’t have obtained the documents listed in the bordereau. What do you say in answer to that?”
I begin cautiously: “Some things I shall say perhaps will contradict what General de Pellieux has said, but I believe it my duty to state what I think. The central point is that the documents listed in the bordereau are much less important than people have been led to believe.”
Once again I am careful to speak forensically. I point out that five sets of data were supposedly handed over with the bordereau. Yet four of them were not actual documents at all but simply “notes,” which required no inside knowledge of the General Staff: notes on the hydraulic brake of the 120 millimetre cannon, on covering troops, on changes to artillery formations, and on the invasion of Madagascar. “Well, why only notes? Surely anyone who had anything serious to offer and not simply what he had picked up in conversation or seen in passing would have said, ‘I send you a copy of such and such a document.’ Now, there was a copy handed over: the fifth document—the firing manual—and surely it’s not a coincidence that we know Major Esterhazy was able to get access to that, and indeed arranged to have it transcribed. But here again the author speaks of having it for only a limited amount of time, whereas an officer on the General Staff, such as Dreyfus, would have had unlimited access.”
There is a large ornate clock to my right. I can hear it ticking in the silence of the court whenever I pause between my points, such is the intensity with which my audience is concentrating. And from time to time, out of the corner of my eye, I can see the doubts beginning to creep across the faces not just of the jurors but even of some of the General Staff officers. Pellieux, less confident now, keeps rising to interrupt me, venturing further and further out onto thin ice, until he makes a significant mistake. I am in the process of pointing out that the concluding phrase of the bordereau—“I am leaving on manoeuvres”—also indicates that its author was not working in the Ministry of War, because the General Staff’s manoeuvres are in the autumn and the bordereau was supposedly written in April, when Pellieux comes forward again.
“But the bordereau wasn’t written in April.”
Before I can answer, Labori is on him in a flash. “Yes it was—or at least so it has always been said by the ministry.”
“Not at all,” insists Pellieux, although there is a tremor of uncertainty in his voice. “I appeal to General Gonse.”
Gonse comes forward and says, “General Pellieux is correct: the bordereau must have been written around the month of August, since it contains a reference to a note on the invasion of Madagascar.”
Now Labori pounces on Gonse. “So when exactly was the note on Madagascar drawn up by the General Staff?”
“In August.”
“Wait.” Labori searches through his bundle of documents and pulls out a sheet of paper. “But in the original indictment of Captain Dreyfus, which was read out at his trial, it is alleged that he copied the Madagascar note in February, when he was in the relevant department. I quote: ‘Captain Dreyfus could easily have procured it then.’ How do you reconcile those two dates?”
Gonse’s mouth flaps open in dismay. He looks at Pellieux. “Well, the note was written in August. I don’t actually know if there was a note in February …”
“Ah, now, gentlemen!” mocks Labori. “You see how important it is to be exact?”
It is such a trivial discrepancy, and yet one can feel the change of mood inside the courtroom like a drop in barometric pressure. Some people start to laugh, and Pellieux’s face turns rigid and flushes with anger. He is a vain man, a proud man, and he has been made to look a fool. Worse, the whole of the government’s case seems suddenly fragile. It has never been tested properly by an advocate of Labori’s quality: under pressure it is starting to appear as fragile as matchwood.
Pellieux requests a brief recess. He stalks back to his seat. Quickly the officers of the General Staff, including Gonse and Henry, form a huddle around him. I can see his finger jabbing. Labori sees it too. He frowns at me, spreads his hands and mouths, “What is this?” But all I can offer is a shrug: I have no idea what they are discussing.
Five minutes later, Pellieux marches back to the front of the court and indicates that he wishes to say something.
“Gentlemen of the jury, I have an observation to make concerning what has just taken place. Until now, we on our side have kept strictly within the bounds of legality. We have said nothing of the Dreyfus case, and I don’t wish to speak of it now. But the defence has just read publicly a passage from the indictment which was supposed to stay behind closed doors. Well, as Colonel Henry says: they want the light; they shall have it! In November of ’96 there came into the Ministry of War absolute proof of the guilt of Dreyfus. This proof I have seen. It is a document, the origin of which cannot be contested, and it contains roughly these words: ‘A deputy is going to ask questions about the Dreyfus case. Never admit the relations that we had with that Jew.’ Gentlemen, I make this declaration on my honour, and I appeal to General Boisdeffre to support my testimony.”
There is a collective intake of breath around the court which then subsides into an exhalation of muttering as people turn to their neighbours to discuss what this means. Again Labori, baffled, stares across at me. It takes me a few seconds to work out that Pellieux must be referring to the letter supposedly retrieved from the German Embassy—the one that turned up so conveniently just before I was removed from Paris, and that Billot read out but wouldn’t show me. I nod vigorously to Labori and make a grabbing gesture with my hands. Pellieux has made another blunder. He must seize this moment before it is lost.
Already Gonse, recognising the danger, is on his feet and hurrying forward. He calls out anxiously to the judge, “I ask for the floor.” But Labori is too quick for him.
“Excuse me, but I have the floor, General. A matter of exceptional gravity has just arisen. After such a statement, there can be no restriction of the debate. I point out to General Pellieux that no document can have any scientific value as proof until it has been discussed openly. Let General Pellieux explain himself without reserve and let the document be produced.”
The judge asks, “General Gonse, what do you have to say?”
Gonse’s voice is a high croak. He sounds as if he is being strangled. “I confirm the testimony of General Pellieux. He has taken the initiative, and he has done well. I would have done the same in his place.” He rubs his hands nervously up and down the sides of his trousers. He looks utterly wretched. “The army doesn’t fear the light. To save its honour, it doesn’t fear at all to tell the truth. But prudence is a necessity, and I do not believe that proofs of this character, though they are indeed real and absolute, can be brought here and made public.”
Pellieux says bluntly, “I ask that General Boisdeffre be sent for to confirm my words,” and ignoring both the judge and the hapless Gonse he calls out to his aide-de-camp, standing in the aisle: “Major Delcassé, take a carriage and go for General de Boisdeffre at once.”
During the recess, Labori comes over to where I am standing. He whispers, “What kind of document is he talking about?”
“I can’t tell you—not in any detail. It would breach my oath of secrecy.”
“You have to give me something, Colonel—the Chief of the General Staff is about to walk in.”
I glance over to where Pellieux, Gonse and Henry are sitting, too absorbed in their own conversation to pay any attention to me. “I can tell you it’s a pretty desperate tactic. I don’t think Gonse and Henry are very happy at the situation they’ve been put in.”
“What line of questioning do you suggest I take with Boisdeffre?”
“Ask him to read the document out in full. Ask whether they will allow it to be forensically examined. Ask him why they only seem to have discovered the ‘absolute proof’ of Dreyfus’s guilt two years after they sent him to Devil’s Island!”
Boisdeffre’s arrival outside the courtroom is announced by a round of applause and cheering from the corridor. The door bangs open. Several orderly officers hurry in ahead of him and then the great man himself begins his slow progress from the rear of the chamber towards the bar of the court. It is the first time I have seen him for fifteen months. Tall and dignified, walking stiffly, buttoned up tightly in his black uniform, which contrasts sharply with the whiteness of his hair and moustache, he seems to have aged a great deal.
The judge says, “General, thank you for coming. An incident has occurred that we did not expect. Let me read to you the stenographic record of the testimony given by General Pellieux.”
After he has finished, Boisdeffre nods gravely. “I shall be brief. I confirm General Pellieux’s deposition in all points as exact and authentic. I have not a word more to say, not having the right.” He turns to the jury. “And now, gentlemen, permit me, in conclusion, to say one thing to you. You are the jury; you are the nation. If the nation has no confidence in the commanders of its army, in those who are responsible for the national defence, they are ready to leave this heavy task to others; you have only to speak. I will not say a word more. Monsieur President, I ask your permission to withdraw.”
The judge says, “You may withdraw, General. Bring in the next witness.”
Boisdeffre turns and walks towards the exit to loud applause from all around the court. As he passes me, his gaze flickers for an instant across my face and a muscle twitches slightly in his cheek. Behind him, Labori is calling: “Pardon me, General, I have some questions to put to you.”
The judge tells him to be quiet. “You do not have the floor, Maître Labori. The incident is closed.”
His mission accomplished, Boisdeffre continues his steady tread away from the witness stand. Several of the General Staff officers rise to follow him, buttoning their capes.
Labori is still trying to summon him back. “Pardon me, General Boisdeffre—”
“You do not have the floor.” The judge hammers his gavel. “Bring in Major Esterhazy.”
“But I have some questions to put to this witness …”
“It was an incident outside the scope of the trial. You do not have the floor.”
It is too late. From the back of the courtroom comes the sound of a door closing—courteously, not slammed—and Boisdeffre’s intervention is over.
After the drama of the last few minutes, the arrival of Esterhazy is an anticlimax. Labori and the Clemenceau brothers can be heard debating in loud whispers whether they should walk out of the trial in protest at Boisdeffre’s extraordinary intervention. The jury—that collection of drapers, merchants and market gardeners—still look stunned at having been threatened by the Chief of the General Staff in person that if they find against the army, the entire High Command will take it as a vote of no confidence and will resign. As for me, I sit shifting in my seat in an agony of conscience as to what I should do next.
Esterhazy—trembling, his unnaturally large and protruding eyes darting constantly this way and that—begins by making an appeal to the jury. “I do not know whether you realise the abominable situation in which I am placed. A wretch, Monsieur Mathieu Dreyfus, without the shadow of a proof, has dared to accuse me of being the author of the crime for which his brother is being punished. Today, in contempt of all rights, in contempt of all the rules of justice, I am summoned before you, not as a witness, but as an accused. I protest with all my might against this treatment …”
I cannot bear to listen to him. Ostentatiously I stand and walk out of the court.
Esterhazy shouts after me, “During the last eighteen months there has been woven against me the most frightful conspiracy ever woven against any man! During that time I’ve suffered more than any one of my contemporaries has suffered in the whole of his life …!”
I close the door on him and search the corridors for Louis until I find him on a bench in the vestibule de Harlay staring at the floor.
He looks up, grim-faced. “You realise we have just witnessed a coup d’état? What else is one to call it when the General Staff is allowed to produce a piece of evidence the defence isn’t allowed to see, and then threatens to desert en masse unless a civilian court accepts it? The tactics they used on Dreyfus they are now trying to use on the entire country!”
“I agree. That’s why I want to be recalled to the witness stand.”
“Are you sure?”
“Will you tell Labori?”
“Be careful, Georges—I’m speaking as your lawyer now. You break your oath of confidentiality and they will put you away for ten years.”
As we walk back to the court, I say, “There’s something else I’d like you to do for me, if you would. There is an officer of the Sûreté, Jean-Alfred Desvernine. Would you try to contact him discreetly, and say I need to meet him in the strictest confidence? Tell him to keep an eye on the papers, and the day after I’m released I’ll be in the usual place at seven in the evening.”
“The usual place …” Louis makes a note without passing comment.
Back in court, the judge says, “Colonel Picquart, what is it you wish to add?”
As I walk towards the stand, I glance across at Henry, sitting crammed in his seat between Gonse and Pellieux. His chest is so vast his arms folded across it appear stubby, like clipped wings.
I stroke the polished wood of the handrail, smoothing the grain. “I wish to say something about the document that General Pellieux has mentioned as absolute proof of Dreyfus’s guilt. If he hadn’t brought it up, I would never have spoken of it, but now I feel I must.” The clock ticks, a trapdoor seems to open at my feet and I step over the edge at last. “It is a forgery.”
The rest is quickly told. When the howling and the shouting have died down, Pellieux steps forward to make a violent attack upon my character: “Everything in this case is strange, but the strangest thing of all is the attitude of a man who still wears the French uniform and yet who comes to this bar to accuse three generals of having committed a forgery …”
On the day the verdict is announced, I am taken by carriage from Mont-Valérien for the final time. The streets around the Palace of Justice are crammed with roughs carrying heavy sticks, and when the jury retires to consider its verdict our group of “Dreyfusards,” as we are starting to be called, stands together in the centre of the court, for mutual protection as much as anything else: me, Zola, Perrenx, the Clemenceau brothers, Louis and Labori, Madame Zola and Labori’s strikingly beautiful young Australian wife, Marguerite, who has brought along her two little boys by her previous marriage. “This way we’ll all be together,” she tells me in her strongly accented French. Through the high windows we can hear the noise of the mob outside.
Clemenceau says, “If we win, we will not leave this building alive.”
After forty minutes the jury returns. The foreman, a brawny-looking merchant, stands. “On my honour and my conscience the declaration of the jury is: as concerns Perrenx, guilty, by a majority vote; as concerns Zola, guilty, by a majority vote.”
There is uproar. The officers are cheering. Everyone is on their feet. The ladies of fashion at the back of the court clamber onto their seats to get a better view.
“Cannibals,” says Zola.
The judge tells Perrenx, manager of L’Aurore, that he is sentenced to four months in prison and a fine of three thousand francs. Zola is given the maximum penalty of a year in gaol and a fine of five thousand. The sentences are suspended pending appeal.
As we leave, I pass Henry standing with a group of General Staff officers. He is in the middle of telling a joke. I say to him coldly, “My witnesses will be calling on yours in the next few days to make arrangements for our duel; be ready to respond,” and I am pleased to see that this has the effect, at least briefly, of knocking the smile off his porcine face.
Three days later, on Saturday, 26 February, the commandant of Mont-Valérien calls me to his office and leaves me standing at attention while he informs me that I have been found guilty of “grave misconduct” by a panel of senior officers and that I am dismissed from the army forthwith. I will not receive the full pension of a retired colonel but only that of a major: thirty francs per week. He is further authorised to tell me that if I make any comments in public again regarding my period of service on the General Staff, the army will take “the severest possible action” against me.
“Do you have anything to say?”
“No, Colonel.”
“Dismissed!”
At dusk, carrying my suitcase, I am escorted to the gate and left on the cobbled forecourt to make my own way home. I have known no other life except the army since I was eighteen years old. But all that is behind me now, and it is as plain Monsieur Picquart that I walk down the hill to the railway station to catch the train back into Paris.
* Zola’s novel about the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.