An Officer and a Spy

It is almost seven. I take a seat just behind Mathieu Dreyfus, who turns and shakes my hand. Lucie nods to me, her face as pale as a midday moon, and manages a brief, strained smile. The lawyers enter clad in their black robes and their strange conical black hats, the giant figure of Labori gesturing with elaborate courtesy for the older Demange to go ahead of him. Then a cry from the back of the court — ‘Present arms!’ — a crash of fifty boots stamping to attention, and the judges file in, led by the diminutive Colonel Jouaust. He wears a bushy white moustache even larger than Billot’s, so huge the top of his face seems to peer over it. He mounts the stage and takes the central chair. His voice is dry and hard: ‘Bring in the accused.’

The sergeant usher marches to a door near the front of the court, his tread very loud in the sudden silence. He opens the door and two men step through. One is the escorting officer and the other is Dreyfus. The courtroom gasps, I among them, for he is an old man — a little old man, with a stiff-limbed walk and a baggy tunic his frame is too shrunken to fill. His trousers flap around his ankles. He moves jerkily into the middle of the courtroom, pauses at the couple of steps that lead to the platform where his lawyers sit, as if to summon his strength, then mounts them with difficulty, salutes the judges with a white-gloved hand and takes off his cap to reveal a skull almost entirely bald, except for a fringe of silver hair at the back which hangs over his collar. He is told to sit while the registrar reads out the orders constituting the court, then Jouaust says, ‘Accused — stand.’

He struggles back to his feet.

‘What is your name?’

In the silent courtroom the response is barely audible: ‘Alfred Dreyfus.’

‘Age?’

‘Thirty-nine.’ That draws another shocked gasp.

‘Place of birth?’

‘Mulhouse.’

‘Rank?’

‘Captain, breveted to the General Staff.’ Everyone is leaning forward, straining to hear. It is difficult to understand him: he seems to have forgotten how to formulate his words; there is a whistling sound through the gaps in his teeth.

After various bits of legal procedure, Jouaust says, ‘You are accused of the crime of high treason, of having delivered to an agent of a foreign power the documents that are specified in the memorandum called the bordereau. The law gives you the right to speak in your defence. Here is the bordereau.’

He nods to a court official, who hands it to the prisoner. Dreyfus studies it. He is trembling, appears close to breaking down. Finally, in that curious voice of his — flat even when charged with emotion — he says: ‘I am innocent. I swear it, Colonel, as I affirmed in 1894.’ His stops; his struggle to maintain his composure is agony to watch. ‘I can bear everything, Colonel, but once more, for the honour of my name and my children, I am innocent.’

For the rest of the morning, Jouaust takes Dreyfus through the contents of the bordereau, item by item. His questions are harsh and accusatory; Dreyfus answers them in a dry and technical manner, as if he were an expert witness in somebody else’s trial: no, he knew nothing of the hydraulic brake of the 120 millimetre cannon; yes, he could have acquired information about covering troops, but he had never asked for it; the same was true of the plans for invading Madagascar — he could have asked but he didn’t; no, the colonel is mistaken — he wasn’t in the Third Department when changes were made to artillery formations; no, the officer who claimed to have lent him a copy of the firing manual was also mistaken — he had never had it in his possession; no, he had never said that France would be better off under German rule, certainly not.

The double tier of windows heats the courtroom like a greenhouse. Everyone is sweating apart from Dreyfus, perhaps because he is accustomed to the tropics. The only time he shows real emotion again is when Jouaust brings up the old canard that he confessed on the day of his degradation to Captain Lebrun-Renault.

‘I did not confess.’

‘But there were other witnesses.’

‘I do not remember any.’

‘Well then, what conversation did you have with him?’

‘It was not a conversation, Colonel. It was a monologue. I was about to be led before a huge crowd that was quivering with patriotic anguish, and I said to Captain Lebrun-Renault that I wished to cry out my innocence in the face of everybody. I wanted to say that I was not the guilty man. There was no confession.’

At eleven, the session ends. Jouaust announces that the next four days of hearings will be held behind closed doors, so that the judges can be shown the secret files. The public and press will be barred, and so will I. It will be at least a week before I am called to give evidence.