An Officer and a Spy

The elderly colonel says, ‘Anything interesting?’ Without waiting for my reply he adds: ‘I didn’t think so. There never is.’ He thumps the roof of the carriage. ‘Drive on!’

20

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.