An Officer and a Spy

wives and children they love!
Colonel Picquart carried out his duty as an honest man. He kept insisting to his superiors in the name of justice. He even begged them, telling them how impolitic it was to temporise in the face of the terrible storm that was brewing and that would break when the truth became known. But no! The crime had been committed and the General Staff could no longer admit to it. And so Colonel Picquart was sent away on official duty. He got sent further and further away until he landed in Tunisia, where they tried eventually to reward his courage with an assignment that would certainly have seen him massacred.
    I come to a halt in the middle of the pavement.
And the astounding outcome of this appalling situation was that the one decent man involved, Colonel Picquart, who alone had done his duty, was to become the victim, the one who got ridiculed and punished. O justice, what horrible despair grips our hearts? It was even claimed that he himself was the forger, that he had fabricated the letter-telegram in order to destroy Esterhazy. Yes! We have before us the ignoble spectacle of men who are sunken in debts and crimes being hailed as innocent, whereas the honour of a man whose life is spotless is being vilely attacked. A society that sinks to that level has fallen into decay.
    Behind me the soldier says, ‘We really ought to be going, Colonel, if you don’t mind.’
    ‘Yes, of course. Just let me finish this.’
    I flick through to the end.
I accuse Colonel du Paty de Clam of being the diabolical creator of this miscarriage of justice . . .
I accuse General Mercier of complicity, at least by mental weakness, in one of the greatest inequities of the century.
I accuse General Billot of having held in his hands absolute proof of Dreyfus’s innocence and concealing it, thereby making himself guilty of crimes against mankind and justice . . .
I accuse General Boisdeffre and General Gonse of complicity in the same crime . . .
I accuse General Pellieux of conducting a fraudulent inquiry . . .
I accuse the three handwriting experts . . .
I accuse the Ministry of War . . .
I accuse the first court martial of violating the law by convicting the accused on the basis of evidence that was kept secret, and I accuse the second court martial of knowingly acquitting a guilty man in obedience to orders . . .
In making these accusations I am aware that I am making myself liable to a punishable offence of libel . . .
Let them dare to bring me before a court of law and investigate in the full light of day!
I am waiting.
With my deepest respect, Monsieur President,
Émile Zola
    I fold up the paper and clamber back into the carriage.
    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