An Officer and a Spy

they’re getting nowhere. Even if they have discovered there was a secret file of evidence, they obviously realise that on its own it means nothing. We just need to make sure it stays like that.’ I turn to Guénée. ‘How are you handling the surveillance?’
    ‘We have them very tightly surrounded, Colonel. Madame Dreyfus’s nanny reports to us weekly. The concierge in Mathieu Dreyfus’s apartment building in the rue de Châteaudun is our informant. We have another who works as his wife’s maid. His cook and her fiancé keep an eye out for us. We follow him wherever he goes. All the family’s communications are diverted here by the postal authorities, and we make copies.’
    ‘And this is the correspondence of Dreyfus himself.’ Henry holds up the file he has brought with him and hands it over to me. ‘They need it back tomorrow.’
    It is tied with black ribbon and stamped with the official seal of the Colonial Ministry. I unfasten it and flick open the cover. Some of the letters are originals – the ones the censor has decided not to let through and which therefore have been retained in the ministry – others are copies of the correspondence that was cleared. My dear Lucie, I ask myself in truth how I can go on living . . . I put the letter back and take out another. My poor Fred darling, what anguish I felt as I parted from you . . . It jolts me. It’s hard to think of that stiff, awkward, chilly figure as ‘Fred’.
    I say, ‘From now on, I’d like to be copied in to all their correspondence as soon as it arrives at the Colonial Ministry.’
    ‘Yes, Colonel.’
    ‘In the meantime, Monsieur Guénée, you should continue the surveillance of the family. As long as their agitation is confined to the level of clairvoyance, there is nothing to concern us. However, if it starts to go beyond that, we may have to think again. And at all times be on the lookout for something that might suggest an additional motive for Dreyfus’s treason.’
    ‘Yes, Colonel.’
    And with that, the briefing ends.
    At the end of the afternoon, I put the file of correspondence into my briefcase and take it home.
    It is a still, warm, golden time of day. My apartment is high enough above the street to muffle most of the city’s noise; the rest is deadened by the book-lined walls. The floor space is dominated by a grand piano – an Erard – miraculously salvaged from the rubble of Strasbourg and given to me by my mother. I sit in my armchair and tug off my boots. Then I light a cigarette and gaze across at the briefcase sitting on the piano stool. I am supposed to change and go straight out again. I should leave it until I return. But my curiosity is too strong.
    I sit at the tiny escritoire between the two windows and take out the file. The first item is a letter sent from the military prison of Cherche-Midi dated 5 December 1894, more than seven weeks after Dreyfus’s arrest. It has been neatly copied out by the censor on lined paper:
My dear Lucie,
At last I am able to write you a word. I have just been informed that my trial takes place on the 19th of this month. I am not allowed to see you.
I will not describe to you all that I have suffered; there are no terms in the world strong enough in which to do so.
Do you remember when I used to say to you how happy we were? All life smiled upon us. Then suddenly came a terrible thunderclap, from which my brain is still reeling. I, accused of the most monstrous crime that a soldier could commit! Even now I think I am the victim of a terrible nightmare . . .
    I turn the page and scan the lines rapidly to the end: I embrace you a thousand times, for I love you, I adore you. A thousand kisses to the children. I dare not speak more to you of them. Alfred .
    The next letter, again a copy, is written from his cell a fortnight later, the day after his conviction: My bitterness is so great, my heart so envenomed, that I should already have rid myself of this sad life if the thought of you had not stayed me, if the fear of increasing your grief still more had not withheld my hand .
    And then a copy of the reply from Lucie on Christmas Day: Live for me, I entreat you my dear friend; gather up your strength, and strive – we will strive together until the guilty man is found. What will become of me without you? I shall have nothing to link me with the world . . .
    I feel grubby reading all this. It is like hearing a couple making love in the next-door room. But at the