An Officer and a Spy

Honour; that passes by a margin of 432 to 32, and when Mercier tries to speak against it in the Senate, he is howled down. On the same day, a second motion is debated, restoring me to the army with the rank I might have hoped to achieve if I had not been dishonourably discharged in 1898; this resolution passes by an even larger margin, of 449 to 26. To my astonishment I find myself walking back on to the parade ground of the École Militaire for Dreyfus’s medal ceremony in the uniform of a brigadier general.
    On 25 October, my friend Georges Clemenceau becomes prime minister; I am in Vienna at the time. That evening, dressed in white tie and tails, with Pauline on my arm, I take my seat at the Vienna State Opera to watch Gustav Mahler conduct Tristan und Isolde . I have been looking forward to this performance for weeks. But just before the house lights dim, I notice an official from the French Embassy hovering in the aisle, and then a telegram begins to be passed along the row, from gloved to jewelled hand. Eventually it reaches Pauline, who gives it to me.
Please be informed that I have today named you Minister of War. Return to Paris immediately. Clemenceau

Epilogue
    Thursday 29 November 1906

25
    ‘ MAJOR DREYFUS TO see the Minister of War . . .’
    I hear him announce himself to my orderly at the foot of the marble staircase in that familiar voice with its trace of German. I listen to the click of his boots as he mounts the steps, and then slowly he emerges into view – the cap, the epaulettes, the gold buttons, the braid, the sword, the stripe on his trousers: all exactly as it was before the degradation, but with the addition of the red ribbon of the Legion of Honour on his artilleryman’s black tunic.
    He comes to a halt on the landing and salutes. ‘General Picquart.’
    ‘Major Dreyfus.’ I smile and extend my hand. ‘I have been waiting for you. Please come through.’
    The ministerial office is unchanged since the days of Mercier and Billot, still panelled in duck-egg blue, although Pauline, who acts as chatelaine, likes to arrange fresh flowers each day on the table between the large windows overlooking the garden. The trees this afternoon are bare; the lights of the ministry burn bright in the late November gloom.
    ‘Sit down, Major,’ I say. ‘Make yourself comfortable. Have you been in here before?’
    ‘No, Minister.’ He lowers himself on to the gilt chair and sits very formally, stiff-backed.
    I take the seat opposite him. He has thickened out, looks good, almost sleek in his expensively cut uniform. The pale blue eyes behind the familiar pince-nez are wary. ‘So then,’ I say, putting my fingertips together, and contemplating him long and hard, ‘what is it you want to discuss?’
    ‘It concerns my rank,’ he says. ‘The promotion I have received, from captain to major, takes no account of the years I spent wrongly imprisoned on Devil’s Island. Whereas your promotion – if you’ll forgive me for pointing it out – from colonel to brigadier general, treats your eight years out of the army as though they were spent in active service. I believe this is unfair – prejudiced, in fact.’
    ‘I see.’ I feel my smile hardening. ‘And what do you want me to do about it?’
    ‘Rectify it. Promote me to the rank I should have achieved.’
    ‘Which would be what, in your opinion?’
    ‘Lieutenant colonel.’
    I pause. ‘But that would require special legislation, Major. The government would have to go back to the Chamber of Deputies and introduce a new motion.’
    ‘It should be done. It is the right thing.’
    ‘No. It is impossible.’
    ‘Might I ask why?’
    ‘Because,’ I say in exasperation, ‘it is politically impossible. The motion passed in July, when feelings were overwhelmingly in your favour because it was the day after your exoneration. This is now November – the mood is already quite different. Also, I have a difficult enough task as it is – as I’m sure you will appreciate – coming back into this building as Minister of War and trying to work with so many officers who were for so long our bitter enemies. I must swallow my anger every day and put past battles behind me. How can I now turn round to them and tear open the whole controversy yet again?’
    ‘Because it is the right thing to do.’
    ‘I’m sorry, Dreyfus. It simply cannot be.’
    We sit in silence. Suddenly there is more than just a strip of carpet between us: there is a chasm, and