An Officer and a Spy

24

Mercier’s testimony is held to have been a disaster—a grave disappointment to his own side, as he failed to provide the promised “proof” that Dreyfus was guilty, and an opportunity for ours, in that Labori—generally considered to be the most aggressive cross-examiner at the Paris bar—will now have the chance to challenge him on the witness stand about the secret file. All he needs is sufficient ammunition, and on Sunday morning I walk to his lodgings to help him prepare. I have no qualms about breaking the last vestiges of my oath of confidentiality: if Mercier can talk about matters of national security, so can I.

“The point about Mercier,” I say, when Labori and I are ensconced in his makeshift study, “is that the Dreyfus affair would never have happened without him. He was the one who ordered the spy hunt to be confined to the General Staff—the original and fundamental error. He was the one who ordered that Dreyfus should be held in solitary confinement for weeks in order to break him. And he was the one who ordered the compilation of the secret dossier.”

“I’ll challenge him on those three points.” Labori is making rapid notes. “But we’re not saying that he knew all along that Dreyfus was innocent?”

“Not at the very beginning. But when Dreyfus refused to confess, and they realised that the only thing they had against him was the handwriting of the bordereau—that was when they started to panic, in my view, and to fabricate the evidence.”

“And you think Mercier knew of this?”

“Definitely.”

“How?”

“Because at the beginning of November, the Foreign Ministry broke an Italian cipher telegram that showed that Panizzardi had never even heard of Dreyfus.”

Labori, still writing, raises his eyebrows. “And this was shown to Mercier?”

“Yes. The decrypt was handed to him personally.”

Labori stops writing and sits back in his chair, tapping his pencil against his notebook. “So he must have been aware more than a month before the court-martial that the ‘lowlife D’ letter couldn’t refer to Dreyfus?” I nod. “Yet he went ahead anyway and showed it to the judges, along with a commentary pointing out its importance in proving Dreyfus’s guilt?”

“And he was still maintaining the same position yesterday. The man is quite shameless.”

“So what did the Statistical Section do with the Italian telegram? Presumably they simply ignored it?”

“No, worse: they destroyed the original War Ministry copy and substituted a false version which implied the opposite—that Panizzardi knew all about Dreyfus.”

“And Mercier is ultimately responsible for this?”

“That is my belief, after months of thinking about it. There are plenty of others with dirty hands—Sandherr, Gonse, Henry—but Mercier was the driving force. He was the one who should have halted the proceedings against Dreyfus the moment he saw that telegram. But he knew it would do him terrible damage politically, whereas if he brought off a successful prosecution he might just ride it all the way to the Élysée. It was a stupid delusion, but then he’s fundamentally a dim man.”

Labori resumes writing. “And what about this other document from the secret file he quoted yesterday—the report by the Sûreté officer, Guénée—can I tackle him on that?”

“It was falsified, without a doubt. Guénée claimed to have been told by the Spanish military attaché, the marquis de Val Carlos, that the Germans had a spy in the intelligence section. Henry swore Val Carlos told him the same story three months later and he used it against Dreyfus at the original court-martial. But look at the language: it’s all wrong. I raised it with Guénée soon after I discovered it. I never saw a man look so shifty.”

“Should we summon Val Carlos as a witness? Ask him to confirm if he ever said it?”

“You could try, although I’m sure he’d plead diplomatic immunity. Why don’t you call Guénée?”

“Guénée died five weeks ago.”

I look at him in surprise. “Died of what?”

“Of ‘cerebral congestion,’ according to the medical certificate, whatever that may be.” Labori shakes his large head. “Sandherr, Henry, Lemercier-Picard and Guénée—that secret file turned out to be a blood pact.”

I rise at five on Monday morning, shave and dress carefully. My gun lies on the nightstand beside my bed. I pick it up, weigh it in my hand, ponder it, then put it away in the chest of drawers.

A gentle knock at my door; Edmond’s voice: “Georges, are you ready?”

As well as lunch and dinner, Edmond and I have also taken to having breakfast at Les Trois Marches. We eat omelettes and baguettes in the small parlour. Across the road, the shutters of Mercier’s house remain tightly shut. A gendarme wanders up and down outside it, yawning.

At a quarter to six, we begin to descend the hill. The sky is filled with rain clouds for the first time; their greyness matches the stone buildings of the quiet town; the air is cooler, glassy. Shortly before we reach the canal there comes from behind us a shout of “Good morning, gentlemen!” and I turn and see Labori hurrying to catch us up. He is wearing a dark suit and a straw boater and swinging a large black briefcase.

“We shall have some amusement today, I think.”

He seems in an excellent mood, like a sportsman eager to get into the arena. He joins us and walks between us, I to his right and Edmond to his left, along the wide dirt path beside the canal. He asks me some last-minute detail about Mercier—“Was Boisdeffre present in the room when the Minister ordered Sandherr to disperse the secret file?”—and I am on the point of replying when I hear a noise at our backs. I suspect an eavesdropper and half turn.

Someone is there all right—a big, youngish fellow, red hair, black jacket, white cap—with a revolver pointing from his hand. There is a tremendous bang that sends the ducks scattering across the water, crying in alarm. Labori says in mystification, “Oh, oh, oh …” and drops to one knee, as if winded. I put out my hand as he topples forward on his face, his briefcase still in his hand.

My first instinct is to kneel and try to support him. He sounds more puzzled than in pain: “Oh, oh …” There is a hole in his jacket almost in the dead centre of his back. I look round to see the assassin about a hundred metres away, running away along the side of the canal. A different instinct—a soldier’s instinct—kicks in.

I say to Edmond, “Stay here.”

I set off in pursuit of the gunman. After a few seconds I am aware of Edmond running behind me. He shouts, “Georges, be careful!”

I yell over my shoulder, “Go back to Labori!” and lengthen my stride, pumping my arms.

Edmond runs for a little longer then gives up the chase. I put my head down, forcing myself to go faster. I am gaining on my quarry. Exactly what I will do if I get my hands on him, given that he presumably has five bullets left and I am unarmed, I am not sure: I will deal with that situation when it arises. In the meantime, there are bargemen up ahead and I shout out to them to grab the assassin. They look to see what is happening, drop their ropes and block his path.

I am close now—twenty metres perhaps—close enough to see him point his gun at them and hear him scream, “Get out of my way! I’ve just killed Dreyfus!”

Whether it’s the gun or the boast, it does the trick. They stand aside and he runs on, and when I race past them, I have to hurdle a foot that is stuck out to trip me over.

Abruptly the houses and the factories fall away and we are into open Breton country. Beyond the canal to my right I can see the railway line and a train steaming into the station; to my left are fields with cows and distant woodland. The gunman suddenly leaves the towpath, darts off to the left and heads towards the trees. A year ago I would have caught him. But all those months in prison have done for me. I am out of breath, have cramp, my heart feels strange. I leap a ditch and land badly, and by the time I reach the edge of the wood he has had plenty of time to conceal himself. I find a stout stick and crash around in the undergrowth for half an hour, slashing at the ferns, startling pheasants, conscious all the while that I might be in his sights, until at last the silence of the trees defeats me and I make my way, limping, back to the canal.

I have to walk back more than three kilometres and so I miss the immediate aftermath of the shooting. Edmond describes it all for me later: how, when he returned to Labori, the great advocate had somehow managed to drag his body on top of his briefcase in order to deter various individuals who had recognised him and were trying to steal his notes; how Marguerite Labori had rushed to the scene wearing a black and white summer dress, and had cradled her husband in her lap, trying to keep him cool with the aid of a small Japanese fan; how he had lain on his side with his arm around her, talking calmly, but scarcely shedding blood—an ominous sign as it often suggests the bleeding is internal; how a shutter had been fetched and four soldiers had heaved Labori onto it and carried the giant with difficulty back to his lodgings; how the doctor had examined him and announced that the bullet was lodged between the fifth and sixth ribs, millimetres from his spine, and the situation was grave—the patient was unable to move his leg; how Labori’s fellow advocate, Demange, had hurried over from the courtroom along with his assistants to find out what was happening; how Labori had grasped his colleague’s hand and said, “Old chap, I’m going to die perhaps, but Dreyfus is safe”; and how everyone had remarked on the way that Dreyfus in court had received the news of his lawyer’s shooting without the slightest change in his facial expression.

By the time I get back, which must be nearly an hour after the attack, the scene of the assault is oddly deserted, as if nothing has happened. At Labori’s lodgings his landlady tells me he has been taken to the house of Victor Basch, a Dreyfusard professor at the local university, who lives in the rue d’Antrain, the same street as Les Trois Marches. I walk up the hill to find a group of journalists in the road outside and a pair of gendarmes guarding the door. Inside, Labori has been laid out, unconscious by now, on a mattress in a downstairs room, and Marguerite is beside him, holding his hand. His face is deathly white. The doctor has summoned a surgeon, who has not yet arrived; his own interim opinion is that it is too dangerous to operate and that the bullet is best left where it is: the next twenty-four hours will be crucial in showing the extent of the damage.

There is a police inspector in the front parlour, questioning Edmond. I give him my description of the attacker, the chase and the location of the wood into which he ran. “Cesson Forest,” says the inspector. “I’ll have it searched,” and he goes out into the hall to speak to one of his men.

While he is out of the room, Edmond says, “Are you all right?”

“Disgusted at my physical fitness; otherwise fine.” I pound the arm of my chair in frustration. “If only I had been carrying my gun—I’d have brought him down easily.”

“Was it Labori he was after, or you?”

I hadn’t thought of that. “Oh, Labori—I’m sure of it. They must have been desperate to stop him cross-examining Mercier. We’ll need to find a replacement for him when the trial resumes.”

Edmond looks stricken. “My God, didn’t you hear? Jouaust would only agree to an adjournment of forty-five minutes. Demange has had to go back to examine Mercier.”

“But Demange isn’t prepared! He doesn’t know the questions to ask!”

It is a disaster. I hurry out of the house, past the journalists, down the slope towards the lycée. It is starting to rain. Huge, warm drops explode on the street stones, filling the air with a fragrance of moist dust. Several of the reporters set off after me. They trot alongside asking questions and somehow managing to write down my answers.

“So the assassin is still at large?”

“As far as I know.”

“Do you think he’ll be caught?”

“He could be—whether he will be is another question.”

“Do you think the army is behind it?”

“I hope not.”

“You don’t rule it out?”

“Let me put it this way: I think it curious that in a town filled with five thousand police and soldiers, an assassin is able to gun down Dreyfus’s advocate and melt away without apparent difficulty.”

That is what they want to hear. At the entrance to the lycée they peel away and run off in the direction of the Bourse de Commerce to telegraph their stories.

Inside, Mercier is on the stand and I realise within a minute of taking my seat that Demange is making heavy work of questioning him. Demange is a decent, civilised man of nearly sixty with bloodhound eyes, who has faithfully represented his client for almost half a decade. But he isn’t prepared for this session, and even if he were, he lacks Labori’s forensic menace. He is, to put it bluntly, a windbag. His habit is to preface every question with a speech, giving Mercier plenty of time to think of his answer. Mercier brushes him aside with ease. Asked about the falsified Panizzardi telegram in the Ministry of War archive, he denies all knowledge of it; asked why he didn’t place the telegram in the secret dossier and show it to the judges, he says it is because the Foreign Ministry wouldn’t have liked it. After a few more minutes of this he is allowed to step down. As he walks back up the aisle, his glance flickers in my direction. He stops and bends down to speak to me, holds out his hand. He knows the entire courtroom is watching us. He says, with great solicitation, loud enough for half the audience to hear, “Monsieur Picquart, this is the most appalling news. How is Maître Labori’s condition?”

“The bullet is still inside him, General. We will know better tomorrow.”

“It is a profoundly shocking incident. Will you be sure to give Madame Labori my best wishes for her husband’s recovery?”

“Certainly, General.”

His strange sea-green eyes hold mine, and for a fractional instant I glimpse the shadow, like a fin in the water, of his dull malevolence, and then he nods and moves away.

——

The following day is the Feast of the Assumption, a public holiday, and the court does not sit. Labori survives the night. His fever diminishes. There are hopes of a recovery. On Wednesday, Demange rises in court and pleads for an adjournment of two weeks, until either Labori is well enough to resume work or a new advocate can be fully briefed: Albert Clemenceau has agreed to take on the case. Jouaust turns the request down flat: the circumstances are unfortunate but the defence will have to get by as best it can.

The first part of the morning’s session is devoted to the details of Dreyfus’s confinement on Devil’s Island, and as the terrible harshness of the regime is described, even the prosecution witnesses—even Boisdeffre, even Gonse—have the decency to look embarrassed at the catalogue of torments inflicted in the name of justice. But when, at the end, Jouaust asks the accused if he has any comment to make, Dreyfus merely responds stiffy, “I am here to defend my honour and that of my children. I shall say nothing of the tortures I have been made to undergo.” He prefers the army’s hatred to its pity. What seems to be coldness, I realise, is partly a determination not to be a victim; I respect him for it.

On Thursday, I am called to give evidence.

I walk to the front of the court, and climb the two steps to the raised platform, conscious of the silence that has fallen behind me in the crowded court. I feel no nervousness, just a desire to get it done. Before me is a railing with a shelf, on which witnesses can place their notes or military caps; beyond that the stage and the row of judges—two colonels, three majors and two captains—and to my left, sitting barely two metres away, Dreyfus. How curious it is to stand there close enough to shake his hand, and yet not to be able to speak to him! I try to forget his presence as I stare firmly ahead and swear to tell the complete truth.

Jouaust begins, “Did you know the accused before the events for which he is charged?”

“Yes, Colonel.”

“How did you know him?”

“I was a professor at the École Supérieure de Guerre when Dreyfus was a pupil.”

“Your relations went no further than that?”

“Correct.”

“You were not his mentor, or his ally?”

“No, Colonel.”

“You were not in his service, nor he in yours?”

“No, Colonel.”

Jouaust makes a note.

Only now do I risk a brief sidelong glance at Dreyfus. He has been so long at the centre of my existence, has changed my destiny so utterly, has grown so large in my imagination, that I suppose it would be impossible for the man to be the equal of all he represents. Even so, it is strange to contemplate this quiet stranger who, if I had to guess, I would say was a retired minor official from the Colonial Service, blinking at me through his pince-nez as if we have just happened to find ourselves in the same railway compartment on a very long journey.

I am recalled to the present by Jouaust’s dry voice saying, “Describe the events as you know them …” and I look away.

My evidence takes up the whole of the day’s session, and most of the next. There is no point in my describing it again—petit bleu, Esterhazy, bordereau … I deliver it, once more, as if it were a lecture, which in a sense it is. I am the founder of the school of Dreyfus studies: its leading scholar, its star professor—there is nothing I can be asked about my specialist field that I do not know: every letter and telegram, every personality, every forgery, every lie. Occasionally, officers of the General Staff rise like sweaty students to challenge me on specific points; I flatten them with ease. From time to time as I speak, I scan the furrowed faces of the judges in the same way that I used once to survey those of my pupils, and wonder how much of this is sinking in.

When at last Jouaust tells me to stand down and I turn and walk back to my seat, it seems to me—I may be mistaken—that Dreyfus gives me the briefest of nods and a half-smile of thanks.

——

Labori’s recovery continues, and in the middle of the following week, with the bullet still lodged in the muscles of his shoulder, he returns to court. He enters accompanied by Marguerite to loud applause. He acknowledges his reception with a wave and walks to his place, where he has been provided with a large and comfortable armchair. The only obvious sign of his injury, apart from his damp and chalky pallor, is the stiffness of his left arm, which he can hardly move. Dreyfus stands as he passes and warmly shakes his good hand.

Privately, I am not convinced that he is as fit to return to his duties as he insists he is. Gunshot injuries are something I know about. They take longer to get over than one imagines. Labori should have had an operation to have the bullet removed, in my opinion—but that would have taken him out of the trial altogether. He is in a lot of pain and isn’t sleeping. And there is also a mental trauma he is refusing to acknowledge. I can see it when he goes out into the street—the way he slightly recoils every time a stranger approaches with his hand extended, or flinches when he hears hurrying footsteps behind him. Professionally it expresses itself in a certain irritability and shortness of temper, particularly with the president of the court, whom Labori delights in goading:

JOUAUST: I urge you to speak with moderation.

LABORI: I have not said a single immoderate word.

JOUAUST: But your tone is not moderate.

LABORI: I’m not in control of my tone.

JOUAUST: Well, you should be—every man is in control of his own person.

LABORI: I’m in control of my person, just not of my tone.

JOUAUST: I shall withdraw your permission to speak.

LABORI: Go ahead and withdraw it.

JOUAUST: Sit down!

LABORI: I will sit down—but not on your orders!

One day, at a legal strategy meeting I attend together with Mathieu Dreyfus, Demange says in his slightly pompous manner, “We must never forget our central objective, my dear Labori, which is not, with all due respect, to flay the army for its errors but to ensure our client walks free. As this is an army hearing, in which the outcome will be decided by military officers, we need to be diplomatic.”

“Ah yes,” retorts, Labori, “ ‘diplomatic’! This would be the same diplomacy, I take it, that led to your client spending four years on Devil’s Island?”

Demange, red-faced with fury, gathers together his papers and leaves the room.

Wearily, Mathieu gets up to go after him. At the door he says, “I understand your frustration, Labori, but Edgar has stood by my family loyally for five years. He has earned the right to set the direction of our strategy.”

On this issue, I agree with Labori. I know the army. It does not react to diplomacy. It responds to force. But even for me, Labori goes too far when he decides to telegraph—without consulting Demange—the Emperor of Germany and the King of Italy, asking them to allow von Schwartzkoppen and Panizzardi (both of whom have withdrawn to their native countries) to come to Rennes to give evidence. The Chancellor of Germany, Count von Bülow, replies as if to a madman:

His Majesty the Emperor and King, our most gracious master, considers it naturally and totally impossible to accede in any manner to Maître Labori’s strange suggestion.

The bitterness between Labori and Demange afterwards worsens to such an extent that Labori, white with pain, announces he will not deliver a closing speech: “I cannot be a party to a strategy in which I do not believe. If that old fool thinks he can win by being polite to these murdering bastards, let him try it alone.”

As the end of the trial draws near, the Préfecture of Police in Rennes, Dureault, approaches me in the crowded courtyard of the lycée during an adjournment, when everyone is outside stretching their legs. He beckons me to one side and says in a low voice: “We have good intelligence, Monsieur Picquart, that the nationalists are planning to arrive in force at the time of the verdict, and that if Dreyfus is acquitted there is liable to be serious violence. In the circumstances, I fear we cannot guarantee your safety, and I would urge you to leave the town before then. I hope you understand.”

“Thank you, Monsieur Dureault. I appreciate your candour.”

“One further piece of advice, if I may. I suggest you catch the night train in order to avoid being seen.”

He moves away. I lean against the wall in the sunshine and smoke a cigarette. I shall not be sorry to go. I have been here nearly a month. So has everyone. There are Gonse and Boisdeffre promenading up and down, arm in arm, as if clinging to each other for support. There are Mercier and Billot, sitting on a wall, swinging their legs like schoolboys. There is Madame Henry, the nation’s widow, veiled from head to foot in black, floating across the courtyard like the Angel of Death, on the arm of Major Lauth, whose relationship with her is said to be intimate. There is the stubby, hairy figure of Bertillon, with his suitcase full of diagrams, still insisting that Dreyfus forged his own handwriting in order to produce the bordereau. There is Gribelin, who has found a shadow to stand in. Not everyone is here, of course. There are some ghostly absences—Sandherr, Henry, Lemercier-Picard, Guénée—and a few that are not so ghostly: du Paty, who has avoided giving evidence by insisting he is too ill; Scheurer-Kestner, who really is ill, and said to be about to die from cancer; and Esterhazy, who has gone to earth in the English village of Harpenden. But otherwise here we all are, like the inmates of an asylum, or the passengers on some legal Flying Dutchman, doomed to circle one another, and the world, for ever.

A bell rings, summoning us back into court.

Edmond and I have a farewell supper at Les Trois Marches on the evening of Thursday, 7 September. Labori and Marguerite are there, but Mathieu and Demange don’t come. We drink a final toast to victory, raising our glasses in the direction of Mercier’s house, and then we take a taxi to the deserted railway station and board the evening train to Paris. No one sees us leave. The town sinks away into the dark behind us.

The verdict is due on Saturday afternoon, and Aline Ménard-Dorian decides it offers the most wonderful opportunity for a luncheon party. She arranges with her friend the Under-Secretary of State for Posts and Telegraphs to have a telephone line left open from her drawing room to the Bourse de Commerce in Rennes—we will thus have the result almost as soon as it is announced—and invites all her usual salon, plus a few others, to a buffet at one o’clock in the rue de la Faisanderie.

I don’t feel much like going, but her invitation is so insistent—“it would be utterly wonderful to have you with us, my dearest Georges, to share in your moment of glory”—that I feel it would be churlish to refuse; besides, I have nothing else to do.

Back from exile, Zola attends, along with Georges and Albert Clemenceau, Jean Jaurès, and de Blowitz of the London Times; there must be fifty or sixty of us, including Blanche de Comminges with a young man named d’Espic de Ginestet, whom she introduces as her fiancé. A liveried footman crouches by the telephone in the corner, checking occasionally with the operator to ensure the line is still working. At three-fifteen, after we have finished eating—or not eating, in my case—he signals to our host, Paul Ménard, Aline’s husband, an industrialist of radical sympathies, and hands him the instrument. Ménard listens gravely for a moment and then announces, “The judges have retired to consider their verdict.” He returns the telephone to the white-gloved hand of the footman.

I go out onto the terrace to be alone, but several other guests follow me. De Blowitz, whose spherical body and bulbous ruddy features give him the look of a character out of Dickens—Bumble, perhaps, or Pickwick—asks me if I can remember how long the judges spent deliberating at the first court-martial.

“Half an hour.”

“And would you say, monsieur, that the longer they take, the more likely the outcome is to be favourable to the accused, or the reverse?”

“I really couldn’t answer that. Excuse me.”

The minutes that follow are a torture. A neighbouring church chimes the half-hour, and then four o’clock. We patrol the patch of lawn. Zola says, “They are obviously weighing the evidence thoroughly, and if they do that then surely they must come down on our side. It is a good sign.”

“No,” says Georges Clemenceau, “men are being induced to change their minds and that cannot be good for Dreyfus.”

I go back into the drawing room and stand at the window. Outside in the street a crowd has gathered. Someone shouts up to ask if there is any news. I shake my head. At a quarter to five, the footman signals to Ménard, who goes over to the telephone.

Ménard listens and then announces, “The judges are returning to the courtroom.”

So their deliberations lasted for an hour and a half. Is that long or short? Good or bad? I am not sure what to make of it.

Five minutes pass. Ten minutes. Someone makes a joke to alleviate the tension, and people laugh. Suddenly Ménard holds up his hand for silence. Something is happening at the other end of the line. He frowns. Slowly, crushingly, his arm descends. “Guilty,” he says quietly, “by five votes to two. Sentence reduced to ten years’ imprisonment.”

Just over a week later, at the end of the afternoon, Mathieu Dreyfus comes to see me. I am surprised to find him on my doorstep. He has never been to my apartment before. For the first time he looks grey and crumpled; even the flower in his buttonhole is faded. He perches on the edge of my small sofa, nervously turning his bowler hat around and around between his hands. He nods to my escritoire, which is strewn with papers, the desk lamp lit. “I see I am disturbing you at your work. Forgive me.”

“It’s nothing—I thought I might try to write some sort of memoir while it’s all still fresh in my mind. Not for publication, though—at least not in my lifetime. Can I get you a drink?”

“No. Thank you. I won’t stay long. I’m catching the evening train to Rennes.”

“Ah. How is he?”

“Frankly, Picquart, I fear he’s preparing himself for death.”

“Oh, come, come, Dreyfus!” I say, sitting down opposite him. “If your brother could survive four years on Devil’s Island, he can withstand a few more months in prison! And I’m sure it won’t be much longer than that. The government will have to let him go in time for the Universal Exhibition, otherwise there’ll be a boycott. They can’t possibly allow him to die in gaol.”

“He’s asked to see the children for the first time since his arrest. Can you imagine the effect that will have on them—to see their father in such a state? He wouldn’t subject them to that ordeal unless it was to say goodbye.”

“Are you sure his health is so poor? Has he been examined by a doctor?”

“The government has sent a specialist to Rennes. He says Alfred is suffering from malnutrition and malarial fever, and possible tuberculosis of the spinal marrow. His opinion is that he won’t last long in captivity.” He looks at me miserably. “For that reason—I’ve come to tell you—I’m sorry to say it—we’ve decided to accept the offer of a pardon.”

A pause. I wish I could keep the coldness out of my voice. “I see. There is an offer on the table, then?”

“The Prime Minister is worried about the country becoming permanently divided.”

“I’m sure he is.”

“I know this is a blow to you, Picquart. I can see that it places you in an awkward position …”

“Yes, well how could it not?” I burst out. “To accept a pardon is an admission of guilt!”

“Technically, yes. But Jaurès has drafted a statement for Alfred to issue the moment he emerges from prison.” He pulls a creased sheet of paper from his inside pocket and hands it over.

The government of the Republic grants me my freedom. It means nothing to me without my honour. Beginning today, I shall persist in working towards an overturning of the frightful judicial error whose victim I continue to be …

There is more, but I have read enough. I give it back. “Well, these are very noble words,” I say bitterly. “Naturally they would be—one can always rely on Jaurès for noble words. But the reality is the army has won. And the very least they’ll insist on in return is an amnesty for those who organised the conspiracy against your brother.” And against me, I want to add. “It will make it impossible for me to pursue my legal claim against the General Staff.”

“In the short term, perhaps. But in the long run, with a different political climate, I have no doubt we can win a full exoneration in the courts.”

“I wish I shared your faith in our legal system.”

Mathieu stuffs the statement back in his pocket and stands. There is defiance in the way he plants his legs apart. “I’m sorry you feel as you do, Picquart. I understand that for the sake of your cause you’d prefer to have my brother die a martyr, if that is what it takes. But his family wants him back alive. He isn’t reconciled to this decision himself, to be honest with you. I think it would make a difference if I could tell him he had your agreement.”

“My agreement? Why should that matter to him?”

“Nevertheless, I believe it does. What message may I give him from you?”

He stands there, implacable.

“What do the others say?”

“Zola, Clemenceau and Labori are opposed. Reinach, Lazare, Basch and the rest say yes, with varying degrees of enthusiasm.”

“Tell him I am opposed as well.”

Mathieu nods curtly, as if he expected nothing else, and turns to leave.

“But tell him that I understand.”

Dreyfus is released on Wednesday, 20 September 1899, although the news is not made public for another day, to enable him to travel without being accosted by members of the public. I learn about his freedom from the newspapers like everyone else. Wearing a dark blue suit and a soft black hat for disguise, he is driven away by automobile from the prison in Rennes at dusk by officers of the Sûreté and taken to join Mathieu at the railway station in Nantes, where the brothers catch the southbound sleeper. At a family house in Provence he is reunited with his wife and children. Afterwards he moves to Switzerland. He doesn’t return to Paris. He fears assassination.

As for me, I scratch a living and, with Labori’s help, pursue various newspapers for libel. In December I refuse to accept the government’s offer of a general amnesty for all those involved in the affair, even though I am told I will be restored to the army and given a command. Why should I put on the same uniform as Mercier, du Paty, Gonse, Lauth and that gang of criminals?

In January, Mercier is elected as senator for the lower Loire on a nationalist platform.

From Dreyfus I hear nothing. And then, more than a year after his release, one bleak day in the winter of 1900, I go downstairs to collect my mail and find a letter, postmarked Paris. The address is in handwriting familiar to me only from secret files and courtroom evidence.

My Colonel,

I have the honour to request that you set a day and a time when you will allow me to express to you in person my gratitude.

Respectfully,

A. Dreyfus

It comes from an address in the rue de Châteaudun.

I carry it back upstairs. Pauline has stayed overnight, as she does quite often now the girls are getting older. Madame Romazzotti is how she prefers to style herself these days, having reverted to her maiden name: people assume she is a widow. I tease her that it makes her sound like a spiritualist on the boulevard Saint-Germain.

She calls from the bedroom, “Anything interesting?”

I read the note again.

“No,” I call back, “nothing.”

Later that morning I take one of my visiting cards and write on the back: Sir, I will let you know the day when I can see you. G. Picquart.

And then I do nothing about it. He is not the kind of man who finds it easy to say thank you; very well; I am not the sort who finds it easy to be thanked; therefore let us spare ourselves the bathos of the encounter. Later, I am accused in the newspapers of flatly refusing to meet Dreyfus. One anonymous friend of the family—it turns out to be the Zionist pamphleteer Bernard Lazare—tells L’Echo de Paris, a right-wing newspaper:

We do not understand Picquart, or his attitude … you probably do not know, nor do many others, that Picquart is energetically anti-Semitic.

How am I to answer this? Perhaps by observing that if the true measure of a man’s character, as Aristotle says, is his actions, then mine have hardly been those of an energetic anti-Semite. Still, there is nothing like an accusation of anti-Semitism to get all one’s old prejudices flowing, and I write bitterly to a friend: “I knew that one day I would be attacked by the Jews, and notably by the Dreyfuses …”

Thus our beautiful cause descends into tantrums, disappointment, reproaches and acrimony.

On the parade ground of the École Militaire, the companies of cadets wheel and stamp on the packed brown dirt. I stand behind the railings of the place de Fontenoy, as I often do, and watch as they are put through their paces. So much of my life is contained here in this spot. This is where I was taught as a young officer, and where I did my teaching. This is where I witnessed Dreyfus’s degradation. Over there in the riding school is where I fought my duel with Henry.

“Companies—attention!”

“Companies—present arms!”

The young men march past, eyes right, in perfect step, and the worst of it is they do not even see me. Or if they do, they see me without registering me—just another middle-aged civilian in a black suit and bowler hat watching wistfully from the other side.

And yet, in the end, we win—not in a flash of glory, as we had always hoped; not at the climax of some great trial, with the condemned man, vindicated at last, carried shoulder-high to freedom. We win quietly, behind closed doors, when tempers have cooled, in committee rooms and archives, as all the facts are sieved and sieved again, by careful jurists.

First, Jaurès, the leader of the socialists, makes a forensic speech in the Chamber of Deputies, lasting a day and a half, setting out the entire affair with such clarity that the new Minister of War, General André, agrees to look again at all the evidence—that is in 1903. Then the result of the André inquiry prompts the Criminal Chamber to take up the case itself, and conclude that it should be reviewed by the Supreme Court of Appeal—that occupies 1904. Then a year is lost in political turmoil over the separation of Church and State—farewell 1905. But finally, the Supreme Court of Appeal quashes the Rennes verdict and exonerates Dreyfus entirely—that happens on 12 July 1906.

On the thirteenth, a motion is laid before the Chamber of Deputies to restore Dreyfus to the army with the rank of major, and to award him the highest available distinction, the cross of the Legion of Honour; that passes by a margin of 432 to 32, and when Mercier tries to speak against it in the Senate, he is howled down. On the same day, a second motion is debated, restoring me to the army with the rank I might have hoped to achieve if I had not been dishonourably discharged in 1898; this resolution passes by an even larger margin, of 449 to 26. To my astonishment I find myself walking back onto the parade ground of the École Militaire for Dreyfus’s medal ceremony in the uniform of a brigadier general.

On 25 October, my friend Georges Clemenceau becomes prime minister; I am in Vienna at the time. That evening, dressed in white tie and tails, with Pauline on my arm, I take my seat at the Vienna State Opera to watch Gustav Mahler conduct Tristan und Isolde. I have been looking forward to this performance for weeks. But just before the house lights dim, I notice an official from the French Embassy hovering in the aisle, and then a telegram begins to be passed along the row, from gloved to jewelled hand. Eventually it reaches Pauline, who gives it to me.

Please be informed that I have today named you Minister of War. Return to Paris immediately. Clemenceau