An Officer and a Spy

This buoyant mood persists, and for the next three months I wake each morning with a curious sense of optimism. On the face of it, my situation could hardly be worse. I have nothing to do, no career to go to, an inadequate income, and little capital to draw on. I still cannot see Pauline while her divorce is pending in case we are observed by the press or the police. Blanche has gone away: it was only after much string-pulling by her brother and various subterfuges (including the pretence that she was a fifty-five-year-old spinster with a heart condition) that she managed to avoid being called as a witness at the Zola trial. I am hissed at in public and libelled in various newspapers, which are tipped off by Henry that I have been seen meeting Colonel von Schwartzkoppen in Karlsruhe. Louis is removed as deputy mayor of the seventh arrondissement and sanctioned by the Order of Advocates for ‘improper conduct’. Reinach and other prominent supporters of Dreyfus lose their seats in the national elections. And while Lemercier-Picard’s death creates a great sensation, it is officially declared a suicide and the case is closed.

Everywhere the forces of darkness are in control.

But I am not entirely ostracised. Parisian society is divided, and for each door that is now slammed in my face, another opens. On Sundays I begin regularly to go for lunch at the home of Madame Geneviève Straus, the widow of Bizet, on the rue de Miromesnil, along with such new comrades-in-arms as Zola, Clemenceau, Labori, Proust and Anatole France. On Wednesday evenings it is often dinner for twenty in the salon of Monsieur France’s mistress, Madame Léontine Arman de Caillavet, ‘Our Lady of the Revision’, in the avenue Hoche — Léontine is an extravagant grande dame with carmine-rouged cheeks and orange-dyed hair on which sits a rimless hat of stuffed pink bullfinches. And on Thursdays I might walk a few streets west, towards the porte Dauphine, for the musical soirées of Madame Aline Ménard-Dorian, in whose scarlet reception rooms decorated with peacock feathers and Japanese prints I turn the pages for Cortot and Casals and the three ravishing young sisters of the trio Chaigneau.

‘Ah! You are always so cheerful, my dear Georges,’ these grand hostesses say to me. They flutter their fans and their eyelashes at me in the candlelight, and touch my arm consolingly — for a gaolbird is always a trophy for a smart table — and call across to their fellow guests to take note of my serenity. ‘You are a wonder, Picquart!’ their husbands exclaim. ‘Either that or you are mad. I am sure I should not retain my good humour in the face of so much trouble.’

I smile. ‘Well, one must always wear the mask of comedy for society. .’

And yet the truth is I am not wearing a mask: I do feel quite confident about the future. I am sure in my bones that sooner or later, although by what means I cannot foresee, this great edifice the army has constructed — this mouldering defensive fortress of worm-eaten timber — will collapse all around them. The lies are too extensive and ramshackle to withstand the pressures of time and scrutiny. Poor Dreyfus, now entering his fourth year on Devil’s Island, may not live to see it, and nor for that matter may I. But vindication will come, I am convinced.

And I am proved right, even sooner than I expected. That summer, two events occur that change everything.

First, in May, I receive a note from Labori summoning me urgently to his apartment in the rue de Bourgogne, just around the corner from the Ministry of War. I arrive within the hour to find a nervous young man of twenty-one, obviously up from the provinces, waiting in the drawing room. Labori introduces him as Christian Esterhazy.

‘Ah,’ I say, shaking his hand somewhat warily, ‘now that is an infamous name.’

‘You mean my cousin?’ he responds. ‘Yes, he has made it so, and a blacker rogue never drew breath!’

His tone is so vehement I am taken aback. Labori says, ‘You need to sit down, Picquart, and listen to what Monsieur Esterhazy has to tell us. You won’t be disappointed.’

Marguerite brings in tea and leaves us to it.

‘My father died eighteen months ago,’ says Christian, ‘at our home in Bordeaux, very unexpectedly. The week after he passed over, I received a letter of condolence from a man I’d never met before: my father’s cousin, Major Walsin Esterhazy, expressing his sympathy and asking if he could be of any practical assistance in terms of financial advice.’