An Officer and a Spy

Lebrun-Renault is identified as the source by name, and this time there is no mistaking the authentic voice of Dreyfus. I can hear his desperation in every line, frantic to convince anyone, even the officer guarding him:
‘Look, Captain; listen. A letter was discovered in a cupboard in an embassy; it was a covering note for four other documents. This letter was shown to handwriting experts. Three said I had written it; two said I hadn’t. And it’s solely on the basis of this that I’ve been condemned! When I was eighteen, I entered the École Polytechnique. I had a brilliant military career ahead of me, a fortune of five hundred thousand francs and the prospect of an annual income of fifty thousand a year. I’ve never chased girls. I’ve never touched a playing card in my life. Therefore I had no need of money. So why would I commit treason? For money? No. So why?’
    None of these details is supposed to be made public, and my first response is to curse Lebrun-Renault beneath my breath as a bloody young fool. Shooting one’s mouth off in front of journalists is unpardonable for an officer at any time – but on a matter as sensitive as this? He must have been drunk! It crosses my mind that I should return to Paris immediately and go straight to the War Ministry. But then I consider my mother, no doubt even at this moment down on her knees praying for my immortal soul, and decide that I am probably better off out of it.
    And so I allow the day to proceed as planned. I retrieve my mother from the clutches of a pair of nuns, we walk back to the house, and at noon my cousin, Edmond Gast, sends his carriage to collect us for lunch at his home in the nearby village of Ville-d’Avray. It is a pleasant, easy gathering of family and friends: the sort of friends who have been around long enough to feel like family. Edmond, a couple of years my junior, is already the mayor of Ville-d’Avray, one of those lucky individuals with a gift for life. He farms, paints, hunts, makes money easily, spends it well, and loves his wife – and who can be surprised, since Jeanne is still as pretty as a girl by Renoir? I envy no man, but if I did it would be Edmond. Next to Jeanne in the dining room sits Louis Leblois, who was at school with me; beside me is his wife, Martha; opposite me is Pauline Romazzotti, who, despite her Italian surname, grew up with us near Strasbourg, and who is now married to an official at the Foreign Ministry, Philippe Monnier, a man eight or ten years older than the rest of us. She is wearing a plain grey dress trimmed with white which she knows I like because it reminds me of one she wore when she was eighteen.
    Everyone around the table apart from Monnier is an exile from Alsace and nobody has a good word to say for our fellow Alsatian, Dreyfus, not even Edmond, whose politics are radical republican. We all have tales of Jews, especially from Mulhouse, whose loyalties, when it came to the crunch and they were offered their choice of citizenship after the war, turned out to be to German rather than French.
    ‘They shift with the wind, according to who has power,’ pronounces Monnier, waving his wine glass back and forth. ‘That is how their race has survived for two thousand years. You can’t blame them, really.’
    Only Leblois ventures a scintilla of doubt. ‘Mind you, speaking as a lawyer, I’m against secret trials in principle, and I must admit I wonder if a Christian officer would have been denied the normal judicial process in the same way – especially as according to Le Figaro the evidence against him sounds so thin.’
    I say coldly, ‘He was “denied the normal judicial process”, as you put it, Louis, because the case involved matters of national security that simply couldn’t have been aired in open court, whoever was the defendant. And there was plenty of evidence against him: I can give you my absolute assurance of that!’
    Pauline frowns at me and I realise I have raised my voice. There is a silence. Louis adjusts his napkin but says nothing more. He doesn’t want to spoil the meal, and Pauline, ever the diplomat’s wife, seizes the chance to move the conversation on to a more congenial topic.
    ‘Did I tell you that Philippe and I have discovered the most wonderful new Alsatian restaurant on the rue Marbeuf . . .’
    It is five by the time I arrive home. My apartment is in the sixteenth arrondissement, close to the place Victor Hugo. The address makes me sound much