An Officer and a Spy

can’t prevent me from seeing my lawyer. Louis brings me the subpoena. I am summoned to give evidence on Friday 11 February.
    I study it. ‘What will happen if Zola is found guilty?’
    We are sitting in the visitors’ room: bars on the windows, two plain wooden chairs and a wooden table; a guard stands outside the door and pretends not to listen.
    Louis says, ‘He’ll go to prison for a year.’
    ‘It was a brave thing he did.’
    ‘It was a damned brave thing,’ agrees Louis. ‘I only wish he’d tempered his bravery with a little prudence. But he got carried away and couldn’t resist putting in this sentence at the end about the Esterhazy court martial – “I accuse them of knowingly acquitting a guilty man in obedience to orders” – and it’s for that the government are going after him.’
    ‘Not for his accusations against Boisdeffre and the others?’
    ‘No, all that they ignore. Their intention is to restrict the trial to this one tiny issue on which they can be certain of winning. It also means that anything to do with Dreyfus will be ruled inadmissible unless it relates strictly to the Esterhazy court martial.’
    ‘So we’ll lose again?’
    ‘There are occasions when losing is a victory, so long as there is a fight.’
    In the Ministry of War they are clearly nervous about what I might say. A few days before the trial an old comrade of mine, Colonel Bailloud, comes out to Mont-Valérien to ‘try to talk some sense’ into me. He waits until we are in the yard, where I am allowed to take exercise for two hours each day, before delivering his message.
    ‘I am empowered to tell you,’ he says pompously, ‘on the highest authority, that if you show some discretion, your career will not suffer.’
    ‘If I keep my mouth shut, you mean?’
    ‘“Discretion” was the word that was used.’
    My first response is to laugh. ‘This is from Gonse, I take it?’
    ‘I prefer not to say.’
    ‘Well, you can tell him from me that I haven’t forgotten I’m still a soldier and that I’ll do my best to reconcile my duty of confidentiality with my obligations as a witness. Is that sufficient? Now clear off back to Paris, there’s a good fellow, and let me walk in peace.’
    On the appointed day I am taken by military carriage to the Palace of Justice on the Île de la Cité, wearing my uniform as a Tunisian rifleman. I have given my word that I won’t attempt to leave the precincts of the palace and will return to Mont-Valérien with my gaolers at the end of the day’s session. As a quid pro quo I am allowed to walk into the building freely, without an escort. In the boulevard du Palais there is an anti-Semitic demonstration. ‘Death to the Jews!’ ‘Death to the traitors!’ ‘Yids to the water!’ My face is recognised, perhaps from some of the vile caricatures that have appeared in La Libre Parole and similar rags, and a few ruffians break away from the rest and try to pursue me into the courtyard and up the steps of the palace, but they are stopped by the gendarmes. I can understand why Mathieu Dreyfus has announced he will not be attending the court.
    The high vaulted hall of the palace, ablaze on this dull February day with electric light, is crowded and noisy like the concourse of some fantastical railway station: clerks and court messengers hurrying with legal documents, lawyers in their black robes gossiping and consulting with their clients, anxious plaintiffs and defendants, witnesses, gendarmes, reporters, army officers, poor people seeking shelter from the winter cold, ladies and gentlemen of high fashion who have managed to acquire a ticket to the Zola sensation – the whole of society throngs the Salle des Pas-Perdus and the endless Galerie des Prisonniers. Bells ring. Shouts and footsteps echo on the marble. I pass more or less unnoticed apart from the occasional nudge and stare. I find my way to the witness room and give my name to the usher. Half an hour later I am called.
    First impressions of the Assize Court: size and grandeur, space, heavy wooden panelling and gleaming brass fixtures, the density of the crowd, the buzz of their conversation, the silence that falls as I walk up the aisle, my boots clicking on the parquet floor, through the little wooden gate in the railing that separates the judge and jury from the spectators, towards the semicircular bar of the witness stand in the well of the court.
    ‘Will the witness state his name?’
    ‘Marie-Georges