An Officer and a Spy

11

I sleep very little that night. I sweat and turn and twist on my narrow bed, corrugating the sheets until it feels as if I am lying on stones. The windows are open to try to circulate some air, but all they admit is the noise of the city. In my insomnia I end up counting the distant chimes of the church clocks every hour from midnight until six. Finally I drop off to sleep, only to be woken thirty minutes later by the hoarse horn blasts of the early morning tramway cars. I dress and go downstairs and walk up the street to the bar on the corner of the rue Copernic. I have no appetite for anything more substantial than black coffee and a cigarette. I look at Le Figaro. An area of high pressure off the southwest coast of Ireland is moving across the British Isles, the Netherlands and Germany. The details of the Tsar’s forthcoming visit to Paris have yet to be announced. General Billot, the Minister of War, is attending the cavalry manoeuvres in Gâtinais. In other words, in these dog days of August, there is no news.

By the time I reach the Statistical Section, Lauth is already in his office. He wears a leather apron. He has produced four prints of each of the two Esterhazy letters: damp and glistening, they still reek of chemical fixer. He has done his usual excellent job. The addresses and signatures have been blocked out but the lines of handwriting are sharp and easily legible.

“Good work,” I say. “I’ll take them with me—and the original letters, too, if you don’t mind.”

He puts them all in an envelope and hands it to me. “Here you are, Colonel. I hope they lead you somewhere interesting.” There is an imploring spaniel’s look in his pale blue eyes. But he has already asked me once what I want with them, and I have refused to answer. He dare not ask again.

I take great pleasure in ignoring the implied question and wishing him a jaunty “Good day, Lauth,” before strolling back to my office. I remove one print of each of the letters and slip them into my briefcase; all the rest go into my safe. I lock my office door behind me. In the lobby I tell the new concierge, Capiaux, that I’m not sure when I’ll be back. He’s an ex-trooper in his late forties. Henry dredged him up from somewhere and I’m not entirely sure I trust him: to me he has the glassy-eyed, broken-veined look of one of Henry’s drinking companions.

It takes me twenty minutes to walk to the Île de la Cité, to the headquarters of the Préfecture of Police, a gloomy fortress rising over the embankment beside the pont Saint-Michel. The building is the old municipal barracks, as dark and ugly inside as out. I give my visiting card to the porter—Lt. Col. Georges Picquart, Ministry of War—and tell him I wish to see Monsieur Alphonse Bertillon. The man is immediately respectful. He asks me to come with him. He unlocks a door and ushers me through it, then locks it behind us. We climb a narrow, winding stone staircase, floor after floor of steps so steep I am bent half double. At one point we have to stop and press ourselves against the wall to let past a dozen prisoners descending in single file. They trail a stench of sweat and despair in their wake. “Monsieur Bertillon has been measuring them,” explains my guide, as if they have been to visit their tailor. We resume our ascent. Finally he unlocks yet another door and we emerge onto a hot and sunny corridor with a bare wooden floor. “If you wait in here, Colonel,” he says, “I’ll find him.”

We are at the very top of the building, looking west. It swelters like a greenhouse with the trapped heat. Beyond the windows of Bertillon’s laboratory, past the chimneypots of the Préfecture, the massive roofs of the Palace of Justice rise and plunge, a blue slate sea, pierced by the dainty gold and black spire of the Sainte-Chapelle. The lab’s walls are papered with hundreds of photographs of criminals, full-face and profile. Anthropometry—or “Bertillonage,” as our leading practitioner modestly calls it—holds that all human beings can be infallibly identified by a combination of ten different measurements. In one corner is a bench with a metal ruler set into it and an adjustable gauge for measuring the length of forearms and fingers; in another, a wooden frame like a large easel, for recording height, both seated (torso length) and standing; in a third, a device with bronze calipers for taking cranial statistics. There is a huge camera, and a bench with a microscope and a magnifying glass mounted on a bracket, and a set of filing cabinets.

I wander around examining the photographs. It reminds me of a vast natural science collection—of butterflies, perhaps, or beetles, pinned and mounted. The expressions on the prisoners’ faces are variously frightened, shamed, defiant, disinterested; some look badly beaten up, half starved or crazy; no one smiles. Amid this dismal array of desperate humanity I suddenly come across Alfred Dreyfus. His bland accountant’s face stares out at me from above his torn uniform. Without his habitual spectacles or pince-nez his face looks naked. His eyes bore into mine. There is a caption: Dreyfus 5.1.95.

A voice says, “Colonel Picquart?” and I turn to find Bertillon holding my card. He is a squat, pale figure in his early forties with a thick pelt of black hair. His stiff beard is cut square, like the blade of an axe: I feel that if I ran my finger along the edge, it would draw blood.

“Good day, Monsieur Bertillon. I was just noticing that you have Captain Dreyfus here among your specimens.”

“Ah yes, I recorded him myself,” replies Bertillon. He comes over to stand beside me. “I photographed him when he arrived at La Santé prison, straight from his degradation.”

“He looks different to how I remember him.”

“The man was in a trance—a somnambulist.”

“How else could one endure such an experience?” I open my briefcase. “Dreyfus in fact is the reason for my visit. I’ve replaced Colonel Sandherr as chief of the Statistical Section.”

“Yes, Colonel, I remember you from the court-martial. What new is there to say about Dreyfus?”

“Would you be so good as to examine these?” I hand him the photographs of the two Esterhazy letters. “And tell me what you think.”

“You know that I never give instant judgements?”

“You might want to in this case.”

He looks as if he might refuse. But then curiosity overcomes him. He goes to the window and holds up the letters to the light, one in either hand, and inspects them. He frowns and gives me a puzzled look. He returns his attention to the photographs. “Well,” he says; and then again: “Well, well …!”

He crosses to a filing cabinet, slides open a drawer and takes out a thick green folder bound with black ribbon. He carries it over to his bench. He unties it, and pulls out a photograph of the bordereau and various sheets and charts. He lays the bordereau and the letters in a row. Then he takes three identical sheets of squared transparent paper and lays one over each of the three documents. He switches on a lamp and pulls the magnifying glass into position and starts to examine them. “A-ha,” he mutters to himself, “a-ha, yes, yes, a-ha …” He makes a series of rapid notes. “A-ha, a-ha, yes, yes, a-ha …”

I watch him for several minutes. Eventually I can’t stop myself. “Well? Are they the same?”

“Identical,” he says. He shakes his head in wonder. He turns to me. “Absolutely identical!”

I can scarcely believe he can be so certain so quickly. The main prop in the case against Dreyfus has just vanished: kicked away by the very expert who put it there in the first place. “Would you be willing to sign an affidavit to that effect?”

“Absolutely.”

Absolutely? The photographs of the criminals on the walls seem to whirl around me. “What if I told you that those letters weren’t written by Dreyfus at all, but here in France this very summer?”

Bertillon shrugs, unconcerned. “Then I would say that obviously the Jews have managed to train someone else to write using the Dreyfus system.”

——

I head back from the Île de la Cité to the Left Bank. I try to track down Armand du Paty at the Ministry of War. I am told he is not expected in that day, but he may be found at home. A junior staff officer gives me his address: 17, avenue Bosquet.

I set off yet again on foot. At some point I seem to have ceased to be an army officer and become a detective. I pound pavements. I interview witnesses. I collect evidence. If and when this is all over, perhaps I should apply to join the Sûreté.

The avenue Bosquet is pleasant and prosperous, close to the Seine, sun-dappled beneath its trees. Du Paty’s apartment is on the second floor. I knock several times without receiving a reply, and I am on the point of leaving when I notice a shadow shifting slightly in the gap below the door. I knock again. “Colonel du Paty? It’s Georges Picquart.”

There is a silence, and then a muffled command: “A moment, if you please!” Bolts are drawn back, a lock turns, and the door opens a crack. A distorted eye blinks at me through a monocle. “Picquart? Are you alone?”

“Yes, of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“True.” The door opens fully to reveal du Paty dressed in a long red silk dressing gown covered in Chinese dragons; on his feet are pale blue Moroccan slippers; on his head a crimson Turkish fez. He is unshaven. “I was working on my novel,” he explains. “Come in.”

The apartment smells of incense and cigar smoke. Dirty plates are piled beside a chaise longue. Manuscript pages are stacked on an escritoire and strewn across the rug. Above the fireplace hangs a painting of a naked slave girl in a harem; on the table is a photograph of du Paty and his aristocratic new wife, Marie de Champlouis. He married her just before the Dreyfus affair began. In the picture she holds a baby in its christening robes.

“So you have become a father again? Congratulations.”

“Thank you. Yes, the boy is one year old.^* He’s with his mother on her family’s estate for the summer. I’ve stayed behind in Paris to write.”

“What are you writing?”

“It’s a mystery.”

Whether he is referring to the genre of his composition or its current state I am not sure. He seems to be in a hurry to get back to it: at any rate he doesn’t invite me to sit. I say, “Well, here is another mystery for you.” I open my briefcase and give him one of the Esterhazy letters. “You’ll recognise the handwriting, perhaps.”

He does, immediately—I can tell by the way he flinches, and then by the effort he makes to conceal his confusion. “I don’t know,” he mutters. “Perhaps it could be familiar. Who is the author?”

“I can’t tell you that. But I can tell you it definitely wasn’t our friend on Devil’s Island, because it was written in the last month.”

He thrusts it back at me: it’s clear he doesn’t want any part of it. “You should show this to Bertillon. He’s the graphologist.”

“I already have. He says it’s identical to the bordereau—‘identical,’ that was his word.”

There is an awkward silence, which du Paty tries to cover by breathing on both sides of his monocle, polishing it on the sleeve of his dressing gown, screwing it back into his eye and staring at me. “What exactly are you about here, Georges?”

“I’m just about doing my duty, Armand. It’s my responsibility to investigate potential spies and I seem to have found another—a traitor who somehow escaped detection when you were leading the Dreyfus investigation two years ago.”

Du Paty folds his arms defensively inside the wide sleeves of his robe. He looks absurd, like a wizard in a cabaret at Le Chat Noir. “I’m not infallible,” he says. “I’ve never pretended otherwise. It’s possible there were others involved. Sandherr always believed Dreyfus had at least one accomplice.”

“Did you have any names?”

“Personally I suspected that brother of his, Mathieu. So did Sandherr, as a matter of fact.”

“But Mathieu wasn’t in the army at the time. He wasn’t even in Paris.”

“No,” replies du Paty with great significance, “but he was in Germany. And he’s a Jew.”

I have no desire to be drawn into any of du Paty’s crazy theories. It is like becoming lost in a maze with no exits. I say, “I must allow you to get back to your work.” I rest my briefcase on the escritoire for a moment so that I can put away the photograph. As I do so, my eye falls unavoidably on a page of du Paty’s novel. “You shall not deceive me with your beauty for a second time, mademoiselle,” cried the duc d’Argentin, with a flourish of his poisoned dagger …

Du Paty watches me. He says, “The bordereau wasn’t the only evidence against Dreyfus, you know. It was the intelligence we had that actually convicted him. The secret file. As you remember.” There is a definite threat in this last remark.

“I do remember.”

“Good.”

“Are you trying to imply something?”

“No. Or at least only that I hope you don’t forget, as you pursue your investigations, that you were part of the whole prosecution as well. Let me show you out.”

At the door I say, “Actually, that’s not entirely accurate, if you’ll allow me to correct you. You and Sandherr and Henry and Gribelin were the prosecuting authority. I was never anything more than an observer.”

Du Paty emits a whinny of laughter. His face is close enough to mine for me to smell his breath: there’s a whiff of decay about it that seems to come from deep within him and reminds me of the drains beneath the Statistical Section. “Oh, is that what you think? An observer! Come, my dear Georges, you sat through the entire court-martial! You were Mercier’s errand boy throughout the whole thing! You advised him on his tactics! You can’t turn round now and say it was nothing to do with you! Why else do you think you’ve ended up chief of the Statistical Section?” He opens the door. “Will you give my regards to Blanche, by the way?” he calls after me. “She’s still not married, I believe? Tell her I would call upon her, but you know how it is: my wife wouldn’t approve.”

I am too angry to think of a reply, and so I leave him with the satisfaction of the last word, imagining himself a wit: smiling after me insufferably from his doorstep in his dressing gown and slippers and fez.

I walk back towards the office slowly, thinking over what I have just been told.

Is this what people say about me—that I was Mercier’s errand boy? That I only got my present job because I knew how to tell him the things he wanted to hear?

I feel as if I have walked into a mirrored room and glimpsed myself from an unfamiliar angle for the first time. Is that really what I look like? Is that who I am?

Two months after Dreyfus’s arrest, in the middle of December 1894, General Mercier summoned me to see him. I was not told what it was about. I assumed it must be in connection with the Dreyfus affair and that others would be present. I was right on the first point, wrong on the second. This time Mercier received me alone.

He was sitting behind his desk. A weak fire of brownish coal hissed in the grate. The bare facts of Dreyfus’s arrest had been leaked to the press six weeks earlier, at the beginning of November—High Treason. Arrest of the Jewish Officer A. Dreyfus—and people were agog to know what he was guilty of, and what the government planned to do about him; I was curious myself. Mercier told me to take a seat and then played his favourite trick of making me wait while he finished annotating whatever document he was bent over, giving me a long opportunity to study the top of his narrow, close-cropped, balding skull and speculate on what schemes and secrets it contained. Eventually he set down his pen and said, “Before I go any further, let me just be certain—you haven’t taken any part in the investigation of Captain Dreyfus since his arrest?”

“None, Minister.”

“And you haven’t spoken about the case to Colonel du Paty or Colonel Sandherr or Major Henry?”

“No.”

There was a pause while Mercier scrutinised me through his eye slits. “You have literary interests, I believe?”

I hesitated. This was the sort of admission that could ruin one’s prospects of promotion. “To some degree; in private, General; yes, I take an interest in all the arts.”

“There’s no need to be ashamed of it, Major. I simply want someone who can make a report for me that would contain more than just the bare facts. Do you think you can do that?”

“I would hope so. Naturally, it would depend on what it’s about.”

“Do you remember what you said in this office on the eve of Dreyfus’s arrest?”

“I’m not sure what you mean, General.”

“You asked Colonel du Paty: ‘What happens if Dreyfus doesn’t confess?’ I made a note of it at the time. It was a good question. ‘What happens if he doesn’t confess?’ Colonel du Paty assured us he would. But now it transpires he hasn’t, despite being held in prison for the past two months. In confidence, Major, I must tell you I feel let down.”

“I can understand that.” Poor old du Paty, I thought. I found it hard to keep a straight face.

“Now Captain Dreyfus is going to stand trial next week in front of a military court, and the very same people who assured me he would confess are promising me with equal certainty that he will be found guilty. But I have learned to be more cautious, you understand?”

“Absolutely.”

“The government will be roasted alive if this trial goes wrong. You’ve seen the press already: ‘the case will be hushed up because the officer is a Jew …’ So this is what I want you to do.” He put his elbows on his desk and spoke very quietly and deliberately. “I want you, Major Picquart, to attend the court-martial every day on my behalf and report back to me each evening on what you’ve seen. I don’t just want ‘He said this, he said that …’—any secretary with shorthand could give me that. I want the very nub of the thing.” He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. “Describe it to me like a writer. Tell me how the prosecution sounds. Look at the judges, study the witnesses. I can’t attend the court myself. That would make the whole thing seem like a political trial. So you’ll have to be my eyes and ears. Can you do that for me?”

“Yes, General,” I said, “I would be honoured.”

I withdrew from Mercier’s office maintaining a suitably solemn expression. But as soon as I reached the landing I tipped my cap to the painting of Napoleon. A personal assignment from the Minister of War! But not just that—I was to be his “eyes and ears”! I trotted down those marble steps with a broad smile on my face.

Dreyfus’s court-martial was scheduled to start on Wednesday, 19 December in the military courthouse, a grim old building directly across the street from the Cherche-Midi prison, and to last three or four days. I very much hoped it would be over by Saturday night: I had tickets to the Salle d’Harcourt, to attend the first public performance of Monsieur Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune.

I made sure to be at the court building early. It was not yet light when I made my way into the crowded vestibule. The first person I met was Major Henry: when he saw me, he jerked his head back in surprise.

“Major Picquart! What are you doing here?”

“The minister has asked me to attend as his observer.”

“Has he, by God?” Henry pulled a face. “Aren’t we grand these days? So you’re to be his stool pigeon? We’ll have to watch what we say when you’re around!” He tried to make it sound as if he was making a joke, but I could tell he was affronted, and from that moment on he was always wary of me. I wished him good luck and climbed the stone staircase to the courtroom on the first floor.

The building was a former convent with low, thick arched doors and roughly plastered whitewashed walls that had little nooks built into them for icons. The chamber set aside for the hearing was barely larger than a classroom and already packed with reporters, gendarmes, soldiers and those peculiar members of the general public whose pastime is attending trials. At the far end, on a platform erected beneath a mural of the Crucifixion, was a long table for the judges, covered with green baize. Carpets had been nailed up over the windows—whether to shut out prying eyes or the December cold I never did discover, but the effect was claustrophobic and curiously sinister. There was a plain wooden chair facing the judges for the accused, a small desk behind it for his lawyer and another nearby for the prosecutor. A chair just to the side of and behind the judges was reserved for me. There was nowhere for the spectators to sit; they could only press themselves against the walls. I took out my notebook and pencil and sat down to wait. At one point du Paty pushed his way in briefly, followed by General Gonse. They surveyed the scene, then left.

Soon afterwards the main players began to appear. There was Maître Edgar Demange, Dreyfus’s attorney, exotic in his black robes and cylindrical black cap but otherwise the epitome of a dull middle-aged farmer with a broad, clean-shaven face and straggling wispy sideburns. The prosecutor was Brisset, thin as a sabre, in the uniform of a major. And finally there came the seven military judges, also in uniform—a colonel, three majors and two captains, led by the president of the court, Colonel Émilien Maurel. He was a shrivelled and unhealthy-looking elderly figure: I learned later he was suffering from piles. He took his place in the centre of the long table and addressed the court in a peevish voice: “Bring in the accused!”

All eyes went to the back of the court and the door opened and in he came. He was slightly bent from lack of exercise, grey from exhaustion and the darkness of his cell, thin from his poor diet: in ten weeks he had aged ten years. And yet, as he advanced into the room, escorted by a lieutenant of the Republican Guard, he held his head at a defiant angle. I even detected a hint of anticipation in his step. Perhaps Mercier was right to be worried. Quite the grand seigneur, I noted, & eager to begin. He halted in front of Colonel Maurel and saluted.

Maurel coughed to clear his throat and said, “State your name.”

“Alfred Dreyfus.”

“Place of birth?”

“Mulhouse.”

“Age?”

“Thirty-five.”

“You may sit.”

Dreyfus lowered himself into his place. He took off his cap and placed it under his seat. He adjusted his pince-nez and glanced around. I was in his direct line of sight. Almost at once his gaze settled on me. I must have held his stare for perhaps half a minute. What was in his expression? I couldn’t tell. But I sensed that to look away would be to concede that I had played a shabby trick on him, and so I wouldn’t do it.

In the end, it was the prosecutor, Brisset, who made us break our contest and look away at the same time. He rose and said, “Monsieur President, in view of the sensitive nature of this case, we would like to request that this hearing be held in private.”

Demange immediately lumbered to his feet. “Monsieur President, we object strongly. My client has the right to be treated the same as anyone else who is accused.”

“Monsieur President, under normal circumstances, nobody would argue with that. But the evidence against Captain Dreyfus necessarily includes important matters of national defence.”

“With all due respect, the only actual evidence against my client consists of just one sheet of disputed writing …”

A murmur of surprise went round the room. Maurel gavelled it away. “Maître Demange! Be silent, please! You are too experienced an advocate to be excused that type of trick. This court will stand adjourned while we retire to make our decision. Take the accused back to his cell.”

Dreyfus was led away again. The judges filed out after him. Demange looked content with this first exchange. As I later warned Mercier, whatever happened, he had smuggled out to the public a message about the thinness of the prosecution’s case.

Fifteen minutes later the judges returned. Maurel ordered that Dreyfus should be retrieved from his cell. He was conducted back to his place, apparently as unperturbed as ever. Maurel said, “We have considered the matter carefully. This case is highly unusual in that it touches on the gravest and most sensitive issues of national security. In these matters one simply cannot be too careful. Our ruling therefore is that all spectators should be excluded immediately and that these hearings should proceed in private.” A great groan of complaint and disappointment arose. Demange tried to object, but Maurel brought down his gavel. “No, no! I have made my decision, Maître Demange! I shall not debate it with you. Clerk, clear the court!”

Demange slumped back. Now he looked grim. It took barely two minutes for the press and public to be ushered out by the gendarmes. When the clerk closed the door, the atmosphere was completely altered. The room was hushed. The carpeted windows seemed to seal us off from the outside world. Only thirteen remained: Dreyfus and his defender and prosecutor; the seven judges; the clerk, Vallecalle; a police official and me.

“Good,” said Maurel. “Now we can begin to consider the evidence. Would the prisoner please stand? Monsieur Vallecalle, read the indictment …”

For the next three afternoons, at the end of each day’s session, I would hurry down the stairs, past the waiting journalists—whose questions I would ignore—stride out into the winter dusk, and pace along the icy pavements for seven hundred and twenty metres exactly—I counted them each time—from the rue du Cherche-Midi to the hôtel de Brienne.

“Major Picquart to see the Minister of War …”

My briefings of the minister always followed the same pattern. Mercier would listen with close attention. He would ask a few terse and pertinent questions. Afterwards he would send me off to Boisdeffre to repeat what I had just said. Boisdeffre, only recently returned from the funeral of Tsar Alexander III in Moscow, his noble head no doubt stuffed full of matters Russian, would hear me through to the end courteously and mostly without comment. From Boisdeffre I would be taken in a War Ministry carriage to the Élysée Palace. There I would brief the President of the Republic himself, the lugubrious Jean Casimir-Perier—an uncomfortable assignment, as the President had long suspected his Minister of War of scheming behind his back. In fact Casimir-Perier was by this time something of a prisoner himself—cut off in his gilded apartments, ignored by his ministers, reduced to a purely ceremonial role. He made clear his contempt for the army by not once inviting me to sit. His response to my narrative was to punctuate it throughout with sarcastic remarks and snorts of disbelief: “It sounds like the plot of a comic opera!”

Privately I shared his misgivings, and they grew as the week progressed. On the first day the witnesses were the six key men who had put together the case against Dreyfus: Gonse, Fabre and d’Aboville, Henry, Gribelin and du Paty. Gonse explained how easily Dreyfus could have got access to the secret documents handed over with the bordereau. Fabre and d’Aboville described his suspicious behaviour while serving in the Fourth Department. Henry testified to the genuineness of the bordereau as evidence retrieved from the German Embassy. Gribelin—drawing on police reports compiled by Guénée—painted a picture of Dreyfus as a womaniser and gambler, which I found frankly unbelievable. But du Paty insisted Dreyfus was driven by “animal urges” and that he was canaille—lowlife—despite his rather prim appearance (Dreyfus simply shook his head at this). Du Paty also alleged the accused had made conscious changes to disguise his handwriting during dictation—an accusation gravely undermined when Demange showed him samples of Dreyfus’s hand, asked him to point out where these transitions occurred, and du Paty was unable to do so.

Taken together, it was not impressive.

At the end of my first report, when Mercier asked me how I thought the prosecution case was looking, I hemmed and hawed. “Now then, Major,” he said softly, “your honest opinion, please. That’s why I put you in there.”

“Well, Minister, in my honest view, it’s all very circumstantial. We have shown beyond doubt that the traitor could have been Dreyfus; we have not proved definitely that it was him.”

Mercier grunted but made no further comment. However, the next day when I turned up at the court building for the start of the second day’s evidence, Henry was waiting for me.

He said in an accusing tone, “I hear you’ve told the minister our case is looking thin.”

“Well, isn’t it?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Now, Major Henry, don’t look so offended. Will you join me?” I offered him a cigarette, which he took grudgingly. I struck a match and lit his first. “I didn’t say it was thin, exactly, just not specific enough.”

“My God,” replied Henry, exhaling a jet of smoke in a sigh of frustration, “it’s easy enough for you to say that. If only you knew how much specific evidence we have against that swine. We even have a letter from a foreign intelligence officer in which he’s identified as the traitor—can you believe it?”

“Then use it.”

“How can we? It would betray our most secret sources. It would do more damage than Dreyfus has caused already.”

“Even with the hearing behind closed doors?”

“Don’t be naïve, Picquart! Every word uttered in that room will leak one day.”

“Well, then I don’t know what to suggest.”

Henry drew deeply on his cigarette. “How would it be,” he asked, glancing around to check he was not being overheard, “if I came back into court and described some of the evidence we have on file?”

“But you’ve already given your evidence.”

“Couldn’t I be recalled?”

“On what pretext?”

“Couldn’t you have a word with Colonel Maurel and suggest it?”

“What reason could I give him?”

“I don’t know. I’m sure we could come up with something.”

“My dear Henry, I’m here to observe the court-martial, not interfere in it.”

“Fine,” said Henry bitterly. He took a last drag from his cigarette then dropped it on to the flagstone floor and ground it out with the toe of his boot. “I’ll do it myself.”

That second morning was devoted to a parade of officers from the General Staff. They queued up to denigrate their former comrade, to his face. They described a man who snooped around their desks, refused to fraternise with them and always acted as if he was their intellectual superior. One claimed Dreyfus had told him he didn’t care if Alsace was under German occupation because he was a Jew, and Jews, having no country of their own, were indifferent to changes of frontier. Throughout all this, Dreyfus’s expression betrayed no emotion. One might have thought him stone deaf or wilfully not listening. But every so often he would raise his hand to signal he wished to speak. Then he would calmly correct a point of fact in his toneless voice: this piece of testimony was wrong because he had not been in the department then; that statement was an error because he had never met the gentleman concerned. He seemed to have no anger in him. He was an automaton. Several officers did say a word or two in his defence. My old friend Mercier-Milon called him “a faithful and scrupulous soldier.” Captain Tocanne, who had attended my topography classes with Dreyfus, said he was “incapable of a crime.”

And then, at the start of the afternoon session, one of the judges, Major Gallet, announced he had an important issue to bring to the court’s attention. It was his understanding, he said gravely, that there had been an earlier inquiry into a suspected traitor on the General Staff, even before the investigation into Dreyfus began in October. If true, he regretted that this fact had been withheld from the court. He suggested that the matter should be cleared up right away. Colonel Maurel agreed, and told the clerk to recall Major Henry. A few minutes later, Henry appeared, apparently embarrassed and buttoning his tunic, as if he had been dragged from a bar. I made a note of the time: 2:35.

Demange could have objected to Henry’s recall. But Henry was putting on such a virtuoso performance of being a reluctant witness—standing bareheaded before the judges, fidgeting nervously with his cap—he must have gambled that whatever was coming might work to Dreyfus’s advantage.

“Major Henry,” said Maurel severely, “the court has received information that your evidence yesterday was less than frank, and that you neglected to tell us about an earlier inquiry you made into the existence of a spy on the General Staff. Is that correct?”

Henry mumbled, “It is true, Monsieur President.”

“Speak up, Major! We can’t hear you!”

“Yes, it’s true,” replied Henry, loudly. He glanced along the row of judges with a look of defiant apology. “I wished to avoid revealing any more secret information than was necessary.”

“Tell us the truth now, if you please.”

Henry sighed and stroked his hand through his hair. “Very well,” he said. “If the court insists. It was in March of this year. An honourable person—a very honourable person—informed us that there was a traitor on the General Staff, passing secrets to a foreign power. In June he repeated his warning to me personally, and this time he was more specific.” Henry paused.

“Go on, Major.”

“He said the traitor was in the Second Department.” Henry turned to Dreyfus and pointed at him. “The traitor is that man!”

The accusation detonated in that little room like a grenade. Dreyfus, hitherto so calm he had seemed scarcely human, jumped up to protest at this ambush. His pale face was livid with anger. “Monsieur President, I demand to know the name of this informer!”

Maurel banged his gavel. “The accused will sit!”

Demange grabbed the back of his client’s tunic and tried to tug him down into his seat. “Leave it to me, Captain,” I heard him whisper. “That’s what you’re paying me for.” Unwillingly, Dreyfus sat. Demange rose and said, “Monsieur President, this is hearsay evidence—an outrage to justice. The defence absolutely demands that this informant be called so that he can be cross-examined. Otherwise, none of what has just been said has any legal weight whatsoever. Major Henry, at the very least you must tell us this man’s name.”

Henry looked at him with contempt. “It’s obvious you know nothing about intelligence, Mâitre Demange!” He waved his cap at him. “There are some secrets an officer carries in his head that even his cap isn’t allowed to know!”

That brought Dreyfus to his feet again—“This is outrageous!”—and once again Maurel gavelled for order.

“Major Henry,” said Maurel, “we will not demand the name, but do you affirm on your honour that the treasonous officer referred to was Captain Dreyfus?”

Henry slowly raised a fat and stubby forefinger and pointed to the picture of Christ above the judges’ heads. In a voice as fervent as a priest’s he proclaimed: “I swear it!”

I described the exchange to Mercier that evening.

He said, “You make it sound highly dramatic.”

“I think one may safely say that if Major Henry ever leaves the army, the Comédie-Française will stand ready to receive him.”

“But will his evidence have the desired effect?”

“In terms of theatre it was first-class. Whether it carries much weight legally is another question.”

The minister sat back low in his chair and made a steeple of his fingers. He brooded. “Who are the witnesses tomorrow?”

“In the morning, the handwriting expert, Bertillon; in the afternoon, the defence is producing witnesses to Dreyfus’s good character.”

“Who?”

“Family friends—a businessman, a doctor, the Chief Rabbi of Paris—”

“Oh, good God!” cried Mercier. It was the first time I had seen him display emotion. “How absurd is this? Do you imagine the Germans would permit such a circus? The Kaiser would simply have a traitor in his army put against a wall and shot!” He propelled himself out of his chair and went over to the fireplace. “This is one of the reasons why we lost in ’70—we completely lack their ruthlessness.” He picked up the poker and stabbed viciously at the coals, sending a spray of orange sparks whirling up the chimney. I was unsure how to respond, so I stayed silent. I confess I had some sympathy for his predicament. He was fighting a life-or-death battle, but without being able to deploy his best troops. After a while, still staring into the flames, he said quietly, “Colonel Sandherr has put together a file for the court-martial. I’ve seen it. So has Boisdeffre. It proves the extent of Dreyfus’s crimes beyond any doubt. What do you think I should do with it?”

I replied without hesitation, “Show it to the court.”

“We can’t—that would mean showing it to Dreyfus. We could, perhaps, show it to the judges, in confidence, so that they can see what we’re dealing with.”

“Then I would do it.”

He glanced at me over his shoulder. “Even though it breaks all the rules of legal procedure?”

“I can only say that if you don’t, there’s a chance he may be acquitted. Under the circumstances, some would say it is your duty.”

I was telling him what he wanted to hear. Not that it would have made any difference. He would have done it anyway. I left him still poking at his fire.

The following morning Bertillon gave his evidence. He came in laden with various charts and handwriting samples which he passed out to the judges, and to the defence and the prosecution. He set up an easel with a complicated diagram involving arrows. “Two handwriting experts,” he said, “have maintained that Dreyfus wrote the bordereau; two have pointed out discrepancies and concluded he did not. I, Monsieur President, shall reconcile these different opinions.”

He paced up and down the confined space, dark and hirsute, like a small ape in a cage. He talked very rapidly. Occasionally he pointed at the chart.

“Gentlemen, you will see that I have taken the bordereau and ruled vertical and horizontal lines over it at a distance of five millimetres. What do we find? We find that the words that occur twice—manoeuvres, modifications, disposal, copy—all begin, within a millimetre, in exactly the same part of one of the squares I have ruled. There is a one-in-five chance that this might happen in any single case. The odds of it happening in all these cases are sixteen in ten thousand. The odds of it occurring with all the other words I have analysed are one hundred million to one! Conclusion: this could not happen with a naturally written document. Conclusion: the bordereau is forged.

“Question: who forged it, and why? Answer: look again at the polysyllables repeated within the bordereau—manoeuvres, modifications. When you place one over the other, you find that the beginnings coincide while the ends do not. But shift the word that comes earliest a millimetre and a quarter to the right, and the ends coincide also. Gentlemen, the writing of Alfred Dreyfus supplied to me by the Ministry of War exhibits exactly the same peculiarities! And as for the differences between the culprit’s hand and the bordereau—the ‘o’ and the double ‘s,’ most obviously—imagine my astonishment when I found exactly these letter formulations in correspondence seized from the culprit’s wife and brother! Five millimetres reticulation, twelve point five centimetres gabarit and a millimetre and a quarter imbrication! Always you find it—always—always! Final conclusion: Dreyfus forged his own handwriting to avoid detection, by modifying it with formulations taken from his family!”

Dreyfus interrupted: “So the bordereau must have been written by me, both because it resembles my handwriting and because it doesn’t?”

“Exactly!”

“Then how can you ever be refuted?”

A good point. I had to suppress a smile. But although Bertillon may have seemed to Dreyfus and indeed to me an impostor, I could see he had impressed the judges. They were soldiers. They liked facts and diagrams and ruled squares and words like “reticulation.” One hundred million to one! Here was a statistic they could grasp.

At the lunchtime adjournment, du Paty approached me in the corridor. He was rubbing his hands. “I gather from several of the judges that Bertillon did well this morning. I do believe we have the scoundrel where we want him at last. What will you tell the minister?”

“That Bertillon appears unhinged, and that I’m still not sure I would put the odds of a conviction at better than fifty-fifty.”

“The minister told me of your pessimism. Of course it’s always easy to complain from the sidelines.” Tucked beneath his arm he had a large manila envelope. He gave it to me. “This is from General Mercier for you.”

It wasn’t heavy. It felt as if it might contain perhaps a dozen sheets of paper. In the top right-hand corner was written in blue pencil a large letter “D.”

I said, “What am I supposed to do with this?”

“You are to give it to the president of the court before the end of the day, as discreetly as possible.”

“What is it?”

“You don’t need to know what it is. Just give it to him, Picquart, that’s all. And do try to be less defeatist.”

I took the envelope in with me to the afternoon session. I didn’t know where to put it. Under my seat? Beside it? In the end, I sat with it awkwardly on my lap as the defence called their character witnesses—a handful of officers, an industrialist, a physician, the Chief Rabbi of Paris in his Hebrew garb. Colonel Maurel, plainly feeling the effects of his piles, dealt with them briskly, especially the rabbi.

“Your name?”

“Dreyfuss—”

“Dreyfus? You are a relative?”

“No, a different family. We are Dreyfuss with two s’s. I am the Chief Rabbi of Paris.”

“Fascinating. What do you know about this case?”

“Nothing. But I have known the family of the accused for a long time and I consider it to be an honest family …”

Maurel fidgeted throughout his testimony. “Thank you. The witness may stand down. That concludes all the evidence in this case. Tomorrow we shall hear closing arguments. The court stands adjourned. Take the prisoner back to his cell.”

Dreyfus picked up his cap, stood, saluted, and was escorted out of the room. I waited until the judges began to file down from their platform, then approached Maurel. “Excuse me, Colonel,” I said quietly, “I have something for you, from the Minister of War.”

Maurel glanced at me irritably. He was a small, hunched figure, his complexion greenish-grey. He said, “That’s right, Major, I’ve been expecting it.” He slipped the envelope between his other papers and walked on without another word. As I turned to watch him go, I discovered Dreyfus’s attorney studying me. Demange frowned and pursed his lips, and for a moment I thought he was going to challenge me. I put my notebook away in my pocket, nodded at him, and walked straight past him.

When I recounted the episode to Mercier, he said, “I believe we did the right thing.”

“In the end it will be for the judges to evaluate,” I replied. “All you can do is to give them the full facts.”

“I presume I don’t need to remind you that no one outside our small group should know about this.” I half expected him to tell me what was in the file, but instead he picked up his pen and went back to his papers. His parting words were: “Be sure to inform General Boisdeffre I have done as we agreed.”

The following morning when I arrived in the rue du Cherche-Midi, a small crowd had already gathered. Extra gendarmes guarded the gate in case of trouble. Inside the courthouse twice the usual number of reporters milled around: one told me they had been promised that they would be allowed back into the courtroom to hear the verdict. I squeezed through the throng and went upstairs.

At nine, the final day’s session opened. Each of the seven judges was given a magnifying glass, a copy of the bordereau and a sample of Dreyfus’s writing. Brisset made an interminable speech for the prosecution. “Take your magnifying glass,” he instructed them, “and you will be certain that Dreyfus has written it.” The court rose for lunch. In the afternoon, an attendant turned on the gaslights, and in the encroaching dusk Demange began summing up for the defence. “Where is the proof?” he demanded. “No single shred of direct evidence links my client to this crime.” Maurel invited Dreyfus to make a short statement. He delivered it staring fixedly ahead: “I am a Frenchman and a man of Alsace above all else: I am no traitor.” And with that it was over, and Dreyfus was led away to await the verdict in a different part of the building.

Once the judges had retired, I went out into the courtyard to escape the oppressive atmosphere. It was just before six, desperately cold. Shadowed in the dim gaslight was a company of soldiers from the Paris garrison. By this time the authorities had closed the gates to the street. It felt like a fortress under siege. I could hear the crowd beyond the high wall, talking and moving in the darkness. I smoked a cigarette. A reporter said, “Did you notice the way Dreyfus missed every other step when they brought him downstairs? He doesn’t know where he is, poor wretch.” Another said, “I hope they’re done in time for the first edition.” “Oh, they will be, don’t worry—they’ll want their dinners.”

At half past six, an aide to the judges announced that the doors to the courtroom had been reopened. There was a stampede for places. I followed the reporters back upstairs. Gonse, Henry, du Paty and Gribelin stood in a row together beside the door. Such was the nervous tension that their faces seemed scarcely less white than the wall. We nodded but didn’t speak. I reclaimed my seat and took out my notebook for the final time. There must have been close to a hundred people jammed into that confined space, yet they made barely a sound. The silence seemed subaqueous—to exert a physical pressure on one’s lungs and eardrums. I wanted desperately for it to be over. At seven, there was a shout from the corridor—“Shoulder arms! Present arms!”—followed by a thump of boots. The judges filed back in, led by Maurel.

“All rise!”

The clerk, Vallecalle, read the verdict. “In the name of the people of France,” he said, at which point all seven judges raised their hands to their caps in salute, “the first permanent court-martial of the military government of Paris, having met in camera, delivered its verdict in public session as follows …” When he pronounced the word “Guilty!” there was a shout from the back of the court of “Vive la patrie!” Reporters began running from the room.

Maurel said, “Maître Demange, you may go and inform the condemned man.”

The lawyer didn’t move. He had his head in his hands. He was crying.

A strange noise seemed to blow in from outside—an odd pattering and howling. I mistook it at first for rain or wind. Then I realised it was the crowd in the street reacting to the verdict with applause and cheering. “Down with the Jews!” “Death to the Jewish traitor!”

“Major Picquart to see the Minister of War …”

Past the sentry. Across the courtyard. Into the lobby. Up the stairs.

Mercier was standing in the middle of his office, wearing full dress uniform. His chest was armour-plated with medals and decorations. His English wife stood beside him in a blue velvet gown with diamonds at her throat. They both looked very small and dainty, like a pair of mannequins in an historical tableau.

I was breathless from my run, sweating despite the cold. “Guilty,” I managed to stammer out. “Deportation for life to a fortified enclosure.”

Madame Mercier’s hand flew straight to her breast. “The poor man,” she said.

The minister blinked at me but made no comment except to say, “Thank you for letting me know.”

I found Boisdeffre in his office, similarly bemedalled in dress uniform, about to depart for the same state banquet at the Élysée Palace as the Merciers. His only remark was, “At least I shall be able to dine in peace.”

Duty done, I ran out into the rue Saint-Dominique and managed, by the skin of my teeth, to hail a taxi. By eight-thirty I was slipping into my seat beside Blanche de Comminges at the Salle d’Harcourt. I looked around for Debussy but couldn’t see him. The conductor tapped his baton, the flautist raised his instrument to his lips, and those first few exquisite, plangent bars—which some say are the birth of modern music—washed Dreyfus clean from my mind.

^* Charles du Paty de Clam (1895–1948), subsequently Head of Jewish Affairs in Vichy France.