An Officer and a Spy

genuineness of the bordereau as evidence retrieved from the German Embassy. Gribelin – drawing on police reports compiled by Guénée – painted a picture of Dreyfus as a womaniser and gambler, which I found frankly unbelievable. But du Paty insisted Dreyfus was driven by ‘animal urges’ and that he was canaille – lowlife – despite his rather prim appearance (Dreyfus simply shook his head at this). Du Paty also alleged the accused had made conscious changes to disguise his handwriting during dictation – an accusation gravely undermined when Demange showed him samples of Dreyfus’s hand, asked him to point out where these transitions occurred, and du Paty was unable to do so.
    Taken together, it was not impressive.
    At the end of my first report, when Mercier asked me how I thought the prosecution case was looking, I hummed and hawed. ‘Now then, Major,’ he said softly, ‘your honest opinion, please. That’s why I put you in there.’
    ‘Well, Minister, in my honest view, it’s all very circumstantial. We have shown beyond doubt that the traitor could have been Dreyfus; we have not proved definitely that it was him.’
    Mercier grunted but made no further comment. However, the next day when I turned up at the court building for the start of the second day’s evidence, Henry was waiting for me.
    He said in an accusing tone, ‘I hear you’ve told the minister our case is looking thin.’
    ‘Well, isn’t it?’
    ‘No, I don’t think so.’
    ‘Now, Major Henry, don’t look so offended. Will you join me?’ I offered him a cigarette, which he took grudgingly. I struck a match and lit his first. ‘I didn’t say it was thin, exactly, just not specific enough.’
    ‘My God,’ replied Henry, exhaling a jet of smoke in a sigh of frustration, ‘it’s easy enough for you to say that. If only you knew how much specific evidence we have against that swine. We even have a letter from a foreign intelligence officer in which he’s identified as the traitor – can you believe it?’
    ‘Then use it.’
    ‘How can we? It would betray our most secret sources. It would do more damage than Dreyfus has caused already.’
    ‘Even with the hearing behind closed doors?’
    ‘Don’t be naïve, Picquart! Every word uttered in that room will leak one day.’
    ‘Well, then I don’t know what to suggest.’
    Henry drew deeply on his cigarette. ‘How would it be,’ he asked, glancing around to check he was not being overheard, ‘if I came back into court and described some of the evidence we have on file?’
    ‘But you’ve already given your evidence.’
    ‘Couldn’t I be recalled?’
    ‘On what pretext?’
    ‘Couldn’t you have a word with Colonel Maurel and suggest it?’
    ‘What reason could I give him?’
    ‘I don’t know. I’m sure we could come up with something.’
    ‘My dear Henry, I’m here to observe the court martial, not interfere in it.’
    ‘Fine,’ said Henry bitterly. He took a last drag from his cigarette then dropped it on to the flagstone floor and ground it out with the toe of his boot. ‘I’ll do it myself.’
    That second morning was devoted to a parade of officers from the General Staff. They queued up to denigrate their former comrade, to his face. They described a man who snooped around their desks, refused to fraternise with them and always acted as if he was their intellectual superior. One claimed Dreyfus had told him he didn’t care if Alsace was under German occupation because he was a Jew, and Jews, having no country of their own, were indifferent to changes of frontier. Throughout all this, Dreyfus’s expression betrayed no emotion. One might have thought him stone deaf or wilfully not listening. But every so often he would raise his hand to signal he wished to speak. Then he would calmly correct a point of fact in his toneless voice: this piece of testimony was wrong because he had not been in the department then; that statement was an error because he had never met the gentleman concerned. He seemed to have no anger in him. He was an automaton. Several officers did say a word or two in his defence. My old friend Mercier-Milon called him ‘a faithful and scrupulous soldier’. Captain Tocanne, who had attended my topography classes with Dreyfus, said he was ‘incapable of a crime’.
    And then, at the start of the afternoon session, one of the judges, Major Gallet, announced he had an important issue to bring to the court’s attention. It was his