An Officer and a Spy

same time I cannot stop myself reading on. I leaf through the file until I come to Dreyfus’s description of the degradation ceremony. When he writes of the glances of scorn cast upon me by his former comrades, I wonder if he has me in mind: It is easy to understand their feelings; in their place, I could not have restrained my contempt for an officer who, I was assured, was a traitor. But alas! that is the pity of it; there is a traitor, but I am not the man . . .
    I stop and light another cigarette. Do I believe these protestations of innocence? Not for an instant. I have never met a scoundrel in my life who hasn’t insisted, with exactly this degree of sincerity, that he is the victim of a miscarriage of justice. It seems to be a necessary part of the criminal mentality: to survive captivity, one must somehow convince oneself one is not guilty. Madame Dreyfus, on the other hand, I do feel sorry for. It is obvious she trusts in him entirely – no, more than that, she venerates him, as if he is some kind of holy martyr: The dignity of your demeanour made a deep impression upon many hearts; and when the hour of rehabilitation comes, as it will come, the remembrance of the sufferings that you endured on that terrible day will be graven in the memory of mankind . . .
    With some reluctance I have to break off here. I lock the file inside the escritoire, shave, change into a clean dress uniform, and set off to the home of my friends the comte and comtesse de Comminges.
    I have known Aimery de Comminges, baron de Saint-Lary, since we were stationed in Tonkin together more than a decade ago. I was a young junior staff officer; he an even younger and more junior lieutenant. For two years we fought the Vietnamese in the Red River delta and knocked around Saigon and Hanoi, and when we returned to France our friendship prospered. He introduced me to his parents and to his younger sisters, Daisy, Blanche and Isabelle. All three women were musical, single, high-spirited, and gradually a salon arose, consisting of them and their friends and those army comrades of Aimery’s who took – or, for the sake of meeting the sisters, pretended to take – an interest in music.
    Six years on the salon persists, and it is to one of these musical soirées that I am bidden tonight. As usual, for purposes of fitness as much as economy, I walk to the party rather than take a cab – and walk briskly at that, for I am in danger of being late. The de Comminges’ family hôtel stands, ancient and massive, on the boulevard Saint-Germain. I can tell it from a distance by the carriages and cabs drawn up to drop off guests. Inside I am greeted with a friendly salute and a warm double handshake by Aimery, now a captain on the staff of the Minister of War, and then I kiss his wife, Mathilde, whose family, the Waldner von Freundsteins, is one of the oldest in Alsace. Mathilde is the mistress of this house now, and has been for a year, ever since the old comte died.
    ‘Go on up,’ she whispers, her hand on my arm. ‘We’ll be starting in a few minutes.’ Her method of playing the charming hostess – and it is not a bad one – is to make even the most commonplace remark sound like an intimate secret. ‘And you’ll stay to dinner, won’t you, my dear Georges?’
    ‘I would love to, thank you.’ In truth, I had been hoping to get away early, but I submit without demur. Bachelors of forty are society’s stray cats. We are taken in by households and fed and made a fuss of; in return we are expected to provide amusement, submit with good grace to occasionally intrusive affection (‘So when are you going to get married, eh, Georges?’), and always agree to make up the numbers at dinner, however short the notice.
    As I move on into the house, Aimery shouts after me, ‘Blanche is looking for you!’ and almost at the same moment I see his sister dodging through the crowded hall towards me. Her gown, with matching headdress, contains a great number of feathers dyed dark green, crimson and gold.
    ‘Blanche,’ I say, as she kisses me, ‘you look like a particularly succulent pheasant.’
    ‘Now I hope you are going to be a Good God this evening,’ she replies chirpily, ‘and not a Horrid God, because I have prepared a nice surprise for you,’ and she takes my arm and leads me towards the garden, in the opposite direction to everyone else.
    I offer token resistance. ‘I think Mathilde wants us all to go