An Officer and a Spy

I have no illusions about what will happen to me as a result — I can hardly complain that I haven’t been given fair warning. ‘I suppose I should regard my month in Mont-Valérien as a kind of trial run.’ I put a brave face on it, for her sake. Inwardly I am less confident. What is the worst I can expect? Once the prison doors close on me, I will be in some physical jeopardy — that has to be taken into account. Incarceration will not be pleasant, and may be prolonged for weeks and months, possibly even a year or more, although I do not mention that to Pauline: it will be in the government’s interests to try to spin out legal proceedings as long as they can, if only in the hope that Dreyfus may die in the interim.

When I’ve finished explaining, she says, ‘You sound as though you have made up your mind already.’

‘If I pull back now, I may never get a better chance. I’d be obliged to spend the rest of my life with the knowledge that when the moment came, I couldn’t rise to it. It would destroy me — I’d never be able to look at a painting or read a novel or listen to music again without a creeping sense of shame. I’m just so very sorry to have mixed you up in all of this.’

‘Don’t keep apologising. I’m not a child. I mixed myself up in it when I fell in love with you.’

‘And how is it, being alone?’

‘I’ve discovered I can survive. It’s oddly exhilarating.’

We lie quietly, our hands interlaced, looking up through the branches to the stars. I seem to feel the turning of the earth beneath us. It will just be starting to get dark in the tropics of South America. I think of Dreyfus and try to picture what he is doing, whether they still manacle him to his bed at night. Our destinies are now entirely intertwined. I depend upon his survival as much as he depends on mine — if he endures, then so will I; if I walk free, then he will too.

I remain there with Pauline for a long time, savouring these final hours together, until the stars begin to fade into the dawn, then I pick up my coat and drape it over her shoulders, and arm in arm we walk back together into the sleeping city.

¹ Godefroy Cavaignac (1853–1905), fervent Catholic, appointed Minister of War 28 June 1898.

22

The next day, with the help of Labori, I draft an open letter to the government. At his suggestion I send it not to the devout and unbending Minister of War, our toy Brutus, but to the anti-clerical new prime minister, Henri Brisson:

Monsieur Prime Minister,

Until the present moment I have not been in a position to express myself freely on the subject of the secret documents which, it is alleged, establish the guilt of Dreyfus. Since the Minister of War has, from the tribune of the Chamber of Deputies, quoted three of those documents, I deem it a duty to inform you that I am in a position to establish before any competent tribunal that the two documents bearing the date 1894 cannot be made to apply to Dreyfus, and that the document dated 1896 shows every evidence of being a forgery. It would seem obvious therefore that the good faith of the Minister of War has been imposed upon, and that the same is true of all those who have believed in the relevance of the first two documents and in the authenticity of the last.

Kindly accept, Monsieur Prime Minister, my sincere regards,

G. Picquart

The letter reaches the Prime Minister on Monday. On Tuesday, the government files a criminal charge against me, based on the Pellieux investigation, accusing me of illegally revealing ‘writings and documents of importance for national defence and security’. An investigating judge is appointed. That same afternoon — although I am not there to witness it, but only read about it the next morning in the papers — my apartment is raided, watched by a crowd of several hundred onlookers jeering ‘Traitor!’ On Wednesday, I am summoned to meet the government-appointed judge, Albert Fabre, in his chambers on the third floor of the Palace of Justice. In his outer office two detectives are waiting and I am arrested, as is poor Louis Leblois.

‘I warned you to think carefully before getting involved,’ I say to him. ‘I have ruined too many lives.’