An Officer and a Spy

moderate.
    LABORI: I’m not in control of my tone.
    JOUAUST: Well, you should be – every man is in control of his own person.
    LABORI: I’m in control of my person, just not of my tone.
    JOUAUST: I shall withdraw your permission to speak.
    LABORI: Go ahead and withdraw it.
    JOUAUST: Sit down!
    LABORI: I will sit down – but not on your orders!
    One day, at a legal strategy meeting I attend together with Mathieu Dreyfus, Demange says in his slightly pompous manner, ‘We must never forget our central objective, my dear Labori, which is not, with all due respect, to flay the army for its errors but to ensure our client walks free. As this is an army hearing, in which the outcome will be decided by military officers, we need to be diplomatic.’
    ‘Ah yes,’ retorts, Labori, ‘“diplomatic”! This would be the same diplomacy, I take it, that led to your client spending four years on Devil’s Island?’
    Demange, red-faced with fury, gathers together his papers and leaves the room.
    Wearily, Mathieu gets up to go after him. At the door he says, ‘I understand your frustration, Labori, but Edgar has stood by my family loyally for five years. He has earned the right to set the direction of our strategy.’
    On this issue, I agree with Labori. I know the army. It does not react to diplomacy. It responds to force. But even for me, Labori goes too far when he decides to telegraph – without consulting Demange – the Emperor of Germany and the King of Italy, asking them to allow von Schwartzkoppen and Panizzardi (both of whom have withdrawn to their native countries) to come to Rennes to give evidence. The Chancellor of Germany, Count von Bülow, replies as if to a madman:
His Majesty the Emperor and King, our most gracious master, considers it naturally and totally impossible to accede in any manner to Maître Labori’s strange suggestion.
    The bitterness between Labori and Demange afterwards worsens to such an extent that Labori, white with pain, announces he will not deliver a closing speech: ‘I cannot be a party to a strategy in which I do not believe. If that old fool thinks he can win by being polite to these murdering bastards, let him try it alone.’
    As the end of the trial draws near, the Préfecture of Police in Rennes, Dureault, approaches me in the crowded courtyard of the lycée during an adjournment, when everyone is outside stretching their legs. He beckons me to one side and says in a low voice: ‘We have good intelligence, Monsieur Picquart, that the nationalists are planning to arrive in force at the time of the verdict, and that if Dreyfus is acquitted there is liable to be serious violence. In the circumstances, I fear we cannot guarantee your safety, and I would urge you to leave the town before then. I hope you understand.’
    ‘Thank you, Monsieur Dureault. I appreciate your candour.’
    ‘One further piece of advice, if I may. I suggest you catch the night train in order to avoid being seen.’
    He moves away. I lean against the wall in the sunshine and smoke a cigarette. I shall not be sorry to go. I have been here nearly a month. So has everyone. There are Gonse and Boisdeffre promenading up and down, arm in arm, as if clinging to one another for support. There are Mercier and Billot, sitting on a wall, swinging their legs like schoolboys. There is Madame Henry, the nation’s widow, veiled from head to foot in black, floating across the courtyard like the Angel of Death, on the arm of Major Lauth, whose relationship with her is said to be intimate. There is the stubby, hairy figure of Bertillon, with his suitcase full of diagrams, still insisting that Dreyfus forged his own handwriting in order to produce the bordereau . There is Gribelin, who has found a shadow to stand in. Not everyone is here, of course. There are some ghostly absences – Sandherr, Henry, Lemercier-Picard, Guénée – and a few that are not so ghostly: du Paty, who has avoided giving evidence by insisting he is too ill; Scheurer-Kestner, who really is ill, and said to be about to die from cancer; and Esterhazy, who has gone to earth in the English village of Harpenden. But otherwise here we all are, like the inmates of an asylum, or the passengers on some legal Flying Dutchman , doomed to circle one another, and the world, for ever.
    A bell rings, summoning us back into court.
    Edmond and I have a farewell supper at Les Trois Marches on the evening of Thursday 7 September. Labori and Marguerite are there,