An Officer and a Spy

rooms in a quiet residential street, the rue de Fougères, in a pretty, white-shuttered, wisteria-covered house owned by Madame Aubry, a widow. A tiny front garden is separated from the road by a low wall. A gendarme is on guard outside. The house stands on a hill only a kilometre from the courtroom. Because of the summer heat, the hearings are scheduled to begin at seven and finish at lunchtime; our intention is to walk there early each morning.
    On Monday, I get up at five. The sun hasn’t risen but it is light enough for me to shave. I dress carefully in a black frock coat with the ribbon of the Legion of Honour in my buttonhole; the bulge of the Webley in my shoulder holster is barely visible. I pick up my cane and a high silk hat, knock on Edmond’s door, and together we set off down the hill towards the river, trailed by two policemen.
    The houses we pass are solid, prosperous bourgeois villas, their shutters tightly closed; nobody is awake up here. Down at the bottom of the hill, along the brick embankments of the river, laundrywomen in lace caps are already on the steps tipping out baskets of dirty washing, while three men wearing harnesses strain to drag a barge piled with scaffolding and ladders. They turn to watch us as we pass – two gentlemen in top hats followed by two gendarmes – but without curiosity, as if such a sight is commonplace at this hour of the morning.
    The sun is up by now; it’s already hot; the river an opaque algae-green. We cross a bridge and turn towards the lycée, to be greeted by a double line of mounted gendarmes drawn up across the empty street. Our papers are checked and we are directed to where a small crowd queues to pass through a narrow door. We go up a few stone steps, through another doorway, past a cordon of infantry with fixed bayonets, and abruptly we are in the courtroom.
    It is twenty metres long, perhaps, by fifteen wide, and two storeys high, filled with clear Breton daylight that pours in on both sides through a double tier of windows. The airy space is thronged with several hundred people. At the far end is a stage with a table and seven crimson-backed chairs; on the wall behind them a white plaster Christ nailed to a black wooden cross; below them, facing one another across the well of the court, the desks and chairs of the prosecution and defence; on both sides, running the length of the hall, the jammed narrow tables and benches of the press, whose numbers dominate the room; and at the back, behind another line of infantry, the public. The central section is reserved for the witnesses, and here we all are again – Boisdeffre, Gonse, Billot, Pellieux, Lauth, Gribelin. We carefully avoid each other’s gaze.
    ‘Excuse me,’ rasps a quiet voice at my back that raises the hairs on my neck. I stand aside and Mercier edges past me, without giving me a look. He walks up the aisle and takes a seat between Gonse and Billot, and immediately the generals begin a whispered conclave. Boisdeffre looks shattered, vacant – he is said to have become a recluse; Billot strokes his moustache and seems bemused; Gonse nods, obsequious; Pellieux has his back half turned. It is Mercier, now on the retired list, gesturing with his fist, who is suddenly the dominant figure again; he has assumed the leadership of the army’s cause. In this affair there must be a guilty party , he has declared to the press. And that guilty party is either Dreyfus or me. Since it is not me, it is Dreyfus. Dreyfus is a traitor. I will prove it. His leathery mask-like face briefly turns in my direction; the gun-slit eyes are momentarily trained on mine.
    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