An Officer and a Spy

compared the handwriting of a couple of his letters to the bordereau . And on second glance, looking at them more closely, perhaps there were similarities: the same small lettering; the same slope to the right; similar spacing between both words and lines . . . A terrible feeling of certainty began to seize hold of me. ‘I don’t know, Colonel,’ I said. ‘What do you think?’ I showed the letters to Boucher.
    ‘Well, I’m no expert either, but they look pretty much alike to me. You’d better bring them along.’
    Ten minutes earlier, Dreyfus had been no more of a suspect to me than anyone else. But the power of suggestion is insidious. As the colonel and I walked together along the corridors of the ministry, my imagination began to fill with thoughts of Dreyfus – of his family still living in Germany, of his solitariness and cleverness and arrogance, of his ambition to enter the General Staff and his careful cultivation of senior officers – so much so that by the time we reached General Gonse’s office I had all but convinced myself: Of course he would betray us, because he hates us; he has hated us all along because he isn’t like us, and knows he never will be, for all his money; he is just . . .
    A regular Jew!
    Waiting for us, along with Gonse himself, were Colonel d’Aboville, Colonel Fabre, the chief of the Fourth Department, Colonel Lefort, head of the First, and Colonel Sandherr. I laid Dreyfus’s letters out on Gonse’s desk and stepped back while my superiors crowded around to look. And from that huddle of uniformed backs arose a growing exclamation of shock and conviction: ‘Look how he forms the capital “s” there, and the “j” . . . And the small “m” and the “r”, do you see? And the gap between the words is exactly the same . . . I’m no expert, but . . . No, I’m no expert either, but . . . I’d say they’re identical . . .’
    Sandherr straightened and slapped his forehead with the heel of his hand. ‘I should have known! How many times have I seen him loitering round, asking questions?’
    Fabre said, ‘I predicted exactly this in my report on him, do you remember, Major Picquart?’ He pointed at me. ‘“An incomplete officer, lacking the qualities of character necessary for employment on the General Staff . . .” Were those not my very words?’
    ‘They were, Colonel,’ I agreed.
    Gonse said to me, ‘Where is Dreyfus exactly?’
    ‘He’s at infantry camp outside Paris until the end of next week.’
    ‘Good.’ Sandherr nodded. ‘Excellent. That gives us some time. We need to get all this to a handwriting expert.’
    Gonse said: ‘So you really think it’s him?’
    ‘Well, if not him – who?’
    No one responded. That was the nub of it. If the traitor wasn’t Dreyfus, then who was it? You? Me? Your comrade? Mine? Whereas if it was Dreyfus, this debilitating hunt for an enemy within would come to an end. Without saying it, or even thinking it, collectively we willed it to be so.
    Gonse sighed and said, ‘I’d better go and tell General Mercier. He may have to speak to the Prime Minister.’ He glanced at me, as if I were the one responsible for introducing this contagion into the ministry, and said to Boucher, ‘I don’t think we need detain Major Picquart any longer, do you, Colonel?’
    Boucher said, ‘No, I don’t believe so. Thank you, Picquart.’
    ‘Thank you, General.’
    I saluted and left.
    I have been silent for a while. Suddenly I am aware of Gribelin, still staring at me.
    ‘Strange,’ I say, flourishing the bordereau . ‘Curious how it brings it all back.’
    ‘Yes, I can imagine.’
    And that might well have been the end of it, as far as my own involvement was concerned. But then to my surprise, a week later I received a telegram at my apartment summoning me to a meeting in the office of the Minister of War at six o’clock on the evening of Sunday 14 October.
    I presented myself at the hôtel de Brienne at the appointed time. I could hear voices as I climbed the stairs, and when I reached the first floor I discovered a small group waiting in the corridor to go in: General Boisdeffre, General Gonse, Colonel Sandherr and a couple of men I didn’t recognise – a corpulent, claret-faced major who, like me, wore the red ribbon of the Legion of Honour, and a superintendent from the Sûreté. There was one other officer. He was standing further along the passage next to the window, rather