An Officer and a Spy

The day is hostile from the start: cold, grey, spitting rain. In the street between the prison and the courthouse a dozen gendarmes stand dripping in their caps and capes, but there are no crowds for them to control. I walk over the slippery cobbled forecourt into the same bleak ex-nunnery in which Dreyfus was tried more than three years ago. A captain of the Republican Guard shows me into a holding room for witnesses. I am the first to arrive. It is a small whitewashed chamber with a single barred window set above head height, a flagstone floor and hard wooden chairs ranged around the sides. A coal-burner in the corner barely suffices to take the edge off the chill. Above it is a picture of Christ with a glowing index finger raised in benediction.

A few minutes later the door opens and Lauth sticks his blond head around the corner. I see from his uniform he has been promoted to major. He takes one look at me and hastily withdraws. Five minutes later he comes back in with Gribelin and they go over to the corner furthest away from me. They don’t look once in my direction. Why are they here? I wonder. Then two more of my former officers show up. The same procedure: straight past me and into the corner huddle. Du Paty marches through the door as if he expects a band to strike up a tune at his entrance, whereas Gonse sidles in, smoking his inevitable cigarette. All keep their backs to me except for Henry, who enters loudly, banging the door, and nods as he passes.

‘You have a good colour, Colonel,’ he says cheerfully. ‘It must be all that African sunshine!’

‘And yours must be all that cognac.’

He roars with laughter and goes to sit with the others.

Gradually the room fills up with witnesses. My old friend Major Curé of the 74th Infantry Regiment carefully ignores me. I recognise the Vice President of the Senate, Auguste Scheurer-Kestner, who offers me his hand and murmurs quietly, ‘Well done.’ Mathieu Dreyfus enters with a slim, quiet, dark-haired young woman on his arm, dressed entirely in widow’s black. She seems so young I assume she must be his daughter, but then he introduces her: ‘This is Madame Lucie Dreyfus, Alfred’s wife. Lucie, this is Colonel Picquart.’ She gives me a faint smile of recognition but doesn’t say anything, and nor do I. I feel uncomfortable, remembering those intimate, passionate letters of hers — Live for me, I entreat you. . On the other side of the room du Paty eyes her keenly through his monocle and whispers something to Lauth: there was a story that he made a pass at her when he went to search her apartment after Dreyfus was arrested; I can believe it.

And so we sit, the military on one side of the room and I with the civilians, listening to the sounds of the proceedings getting under way above us: the thump of feet climbing the stairs, the cry of ‘Present arms!’ as the judges arrive, and then a long interval of silence during which we wait for news. Eventually the clerk of the court appears and announces that the civil suits brought by the Dreyfus family have been rejected, and that therefore there will be no reconsideration of the original court martial verdict, which stands. Also, the judges have voted by a majority that all the evidence given by military personnel will be heard in secret. Thus we have lost the battle before it even starts. With a practised stoicism, Lucie rises, expressionless, embraces Mathieu and leaves.

Another hour passes, during which presumably Esterhazy is being questioned, and then the clerk returns and calls, ‘Monsieur Mathieu Dreyfus!’ As the original complainant against Esterhazy to the Minister of War, he has the privilege of going first. He does not return. Forty-five minutes later Scheurer-Kestner is called. He does not return either. In this way the room gradually empties of its various handwriting experts and officers until at last, in the middle of the afternoon, Gonse and the men of the Statistical Section are all summoned en bloc. They file out, every one of them avoiding eye contact, except for Gonse, who at the last minute pauses on the threshold to look back at me. I cannot fathom his expression. Is it hatred, pity, bafflement, regret, or all of these? Or is it that he just wants to carry one last image of me in his mind before I disappear for ever? He stares for several seconds, and then he turns on his heel and the door closes, leaving me alone.

For several hours I wait, occasionally standing to pace the room to try to keep myself warm. More than ever, I wish Louis were with me. If I had any doubts of it before, I have none now: this is not Esterhazy’s court martial; it is mine.