An Officer and a Spy

worse than a crime: it is a blunder. ‘Well,’ I begin carefully, ‘ we may wish it to be over, General, and our lawyers may indeed tell us that it is over. But the Dreyfus family feel differently. And putting aside any other considerations, I am worried, frankly, about the damage to the army’s reputation if it were to emerge one day that we knew his conviction was unsafe and we did nothing about it.’
    ‘Then it had better not emerge, had it?’ he says cheerfully. He is smiling, but there is a threat in his eyes. ‘So there we are. I’ve said all I have to say on the matter.’ The arms of the wicker chair squeak in protest as he pushes himself to his feet. ‘Leave Dreyfus out of it, Colonel. That’s an order.’
    On the train back to Paris I sit with my briefcase clutched tightly in my lap. I stare out bleakly at the rear balconies and washing lines of the northern suburbs, and the soot-caked stations – Colombes, Asnières, Clichy. I can hardly believe what has just occurred. I keep going over the conversation in my mind. Did I make some mistake in my presentation? Should I have laid it out more clearly – told him in plain terms that the so-called ‘evidence’ in the secret file crumbles into the mere dust of conjecture compared to what we know for sure about Esterhazy? But the more I think of it, the more certain I am that such frankness would have been a grave error. Gonse is utterly intransigent: nothing I can say will shift his opinion; there is no way on earth, as far as he’s concerned, that Dreyfus will be brought back for a retrial. To have pushed it even further would only have led to a complete breakdown in our relations.
    I don’t return to the office: I cannot face it. Instead I go back to my apartment and lie on my bed and smoke cigarette after cigarette with a relentlessness that would impress Gonse, even if nothing else about me does.
    The thing is, I have no wish to destroy my career. Twenty-four years it has taken me to get this far. Yet my career will be pointless to me – will lose the very elements of honour and pride that make it worth having – if the price of keeping it is to become merely one of the Gonses of this world.
    Res judicata!
    By the time it is dark and I get up to turn on the lamps, I have concluded that there is only one course open to me. I shall bypass Boisdeffre and Gonse and exercise my privilege of unrestricted access to the hôtel de Brienne: I shall lay the case personally before the Minister of War.
    Things are starting to stir now – cracks in the glacier; a trembling under the earth – faint warning signs that great forces are on the move.
    For months there has been nothing in the press about Dreyfus. But on the day after my visit to Gonse, the Colonial Ministry is obliged to deny a wild rumour in the London press that he has escaped from Devil’s Island. At the time I think nothing of it: it’s just journalism, and English journalism at that.
    Then on the Tuesday Le Figaro appears with its lead story, ‘The Captivity of Dreyfus’, spread across the first two and a half columns of the front page. The report is an accurate, well-informed and sympathetic account of what Dreyfus is enduring on Devil’s Island (‘forty to fifty thousand francs a year to keep alive a French officer who, since the day of his public degradation, has endured a death worse than death’). I presume the information has come from the Dreyfus family.
    It is against this background that the next day I go to brief the minister.
    I unlock the garden gate and make my way, unseen by any curious eyes in the ministry, across the lawn and into the rear of his official residence.
    The old boy has been on leave for a week. This is his first day back. He seems to be in good spirits. His bulbous nose and the top of his bald head are peeling from exposure to the sun. He sits up straight in his chair, stroking his vast white moustaches, watching with amusement as yet again I bring out all the paperwork associated with the case. ‘Good God! I’m an old man, Picquart. Time is precious. How long is all this going to take?’
    ‘I’m afraid it’s partly your fault, Minister.’
    ‘Ah, do you hear him? The cheek of the young! My fault? And pray how is that?’
    ‘You very kindly authorised your staff to show me these letters from the suspected traitor, Esterhazy,’ I say, passing them over, ‘and then I’m afraid I noticed their distinct similarity to this.’ I give him the