The Dreyfus Affair (36 page)

Commandant du Paty de Clam provoked derision among the Dreyfusards in the courtroom by marching in and saluting the President as if on parade. He too refused to answer most of the questions put to him on grounds of national security. Henry, now promoted to the rank of lieutenant-colonel, followed du Paty into the witness box. He resorted to a different means of evasion: he was sick; he had a doctor's certificate to prove it; and the effect of the medicine he had taken, and insomnia, made it hard for him to understand the questions put to him. At the request of General Gonse, he was excused. ‘Colonel Henry is extremely ill,' said Gonse. ‘He has made a great effort to be here; I ask the Court to excuse him.'

Alphonse Bertillon gave his evidence with the help of a blackboard which he used to illustrate his theory of auto-forgery. It was ridiculed by Labori and Albert Clemenceau, and he stood down amid derisive laughter. ‘Here is the sum total of the charge of 1894,' said Labori. ‘The
bordereau
! And there is the principal expert!'

Esterhazy was grilled by Albert Clemenceau with over sixty questions about his private life, all of which he declined to answer. He looked furtive, hunted, acutely uncomfortable, but was saved by the presiding judge from answering the crucial question put by Clemenceau: had he had any dealings with Colonel von Schwartzkoppen? The question was inadmissible, ruled Judge Delegorgue, because it impinged on ‘the honour and the security of the nation'.

‘From which one may conclude', asked Albert Clemenceau, ‘that the honour of the nation allows an officer to do these things but not to talk about them?'

Esterhazy, in a state of near-collapse, returned to his seat among the spectators to the cheers of the officers around him.

 

Colonel Picquart, also in uniform – the gold-braided sky-blue uniform of a
franc-tireur
– had been released from detention to attend the hearing. As described by Proust, his bearing as he entered the courtroom was in contrast to du Paty's. It was as if

 

he had only just dismounted, and still retained even on his feet the quick, light movements of a Spahi, walking quickly straight ahead, with that free and easy carriage of the body which a man might show who had just dropped his reins and unbuckled his sword, and with a look of mild bewilderment upon his face advanced to the President's seat, where he came to a stop and saluted, not in military fashion, but with a mingled air of timidity and frankness, as though his every gesture was free of all formality or merely external significance but was overflowing like his walk, the sideways carriage of his head as would soon be apparent, his well-bred voice, with all the elegance and warmth of his personality.
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Youthful in appearance, sometimes abstracted ‘as if an artist as much as a soldier', his face still red from the North African sun, Picquart described to the court how he had uncovered the evidence of Esterhazy's guilt; and how his report to his superiors had been ignored. Maurice Paléologue found Picquart's manner in the witness stand hesitant, unhappily caught between his duty to the army and his duty to the truth. Some of the Dreyfusards were disappointed by his detachment: ‘more warmth would not hurt', said Reinach. The anti-Dreyfusards saw in the controlled way in which he gave his evidence a duplicitous cunning. If so, it was a cunning that paid off: his evidence so impressed his audience that there were shouts of ‘Long live Picquart!'

Henry, who was considered well enough to be called back to rebut Picquart, admitted that his claim to have seen Picquart show Leblois the secret dossier was to be taken ‘figuratively', not literally, but he insisted that ‘Colonel Picquart has lied' – a charge that would later lead to a duel. Pressed with awkward questions by Albert Clemenceau, he pleaded a relapse and was permitted to leave the stand.

The defence now produced an array of expert witnesses to refute the ‘insane' hypothesis of Bertillon and show that it was beyond doubt that the
bordereau
and Esterhazy's letters were written by the same hand. General de Pellieux came to the defence of the man his inquiry had exonerated. He insisted that, unlike Dreyfus, Esterhazy had no access to the documents named in the
bordereau
. He appealed to the patriotism of the jurors: ‘What do you want this Army to become on the day of danger, which may be closer than you think? What do you want for the poor soldiers, who will be led into fire by leaders that have been demeaned in their eyes? It is to the slaughterhouse that your sons would be led, gentlemen of the jury!' The army would have been happy, he insisted, ‘had the court martial of 1894 acquitted Dreyfus; it would have proved that there was not a traitor in the army, and we are still in mourning over that fact. But what the court martial of 1898 [of Esterhazy] would not admit, the chasm it would not cross, was this: that an innocent man should take the place of Dreyfus, whether he be guilty or not. I have finished.'
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But Pellieux had not finished. After Picquart had returned to the stand to demonstrate that Esterhazy could easily have had access to the documents listed in the
bordereau
, he was provoked to break ‘the pact of silence' that until then had restrained him to tell the court the whole truth. There was a document – a document that had nothing to do with Dreyfus's court martial – that proved without doubt the guilt of Dreyfus. ‘And that proof I saw . . . There came to the Ministry of War a paper whose origin cannot be doubted and which says – I will tell you what it says: “I have read that a deputy is to ask questions about Dreyfus. If someone in Rome asks for new explanations, I will say that I have never had any dealings with the Jew. If someone asks you, say the same for no one must ever know what happened with him . . .” And, gentlemen, the note is signed . . . That is what I have been anxious to say.'

Pellieux was referring to the letter forged by Henry which had been used to reassure men like Billot and Pellieux behind the scenes but was never intended to be brought out into the open. ‘The honest General Pellieux', wrote Marcel Thomas, ‘made the gaffe which in the long term produced the key to Henry's machinations.'
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The Dreyfusards already suspected the existence of such a letter; Billot had referred to it when lobbied by Scheurer-Kestner. But now with feigned astonishment Labori asked for the document he referred to to be produced in evidence. ‘Whatever respect I may have for General de Pellieux's word as a soldier, I cannot accord the slightest importance to this document. So long as we do not see it, so long as we have not discussed it, so long as it has not been made public, it counts for nothing.'

General Gonse stepped in to undo the damage done by Pellieux's revelation. ‘The Army is not afraid of the light. It is not afraid to say where the truth is to be found to save its honour. But discretion is required; and I do not see how, in the interests of national security, one can bring a document of that kind into open court.' But Pellieux was not to be restrained. ‘And there are other documents,' he assured the court, ‘which will be outlined by General de Boisdeffre!'

‘What Pellieux has done is idiotic,' Henry told Paléologue; but any hope among the Dreyfusards that the cat might get out of the bag was demolished by the superlative gamesmanship of General de Boisdeffre. Recalled the day after General de Pellieux's triumphant assertion that he would tell all, this man of very high rank – indeed, of the highest rank in the hierarchy of France's most respected institution – addressed the court in a calm, emphatic and above all authoritative tone of voice. ‘I will be brief. I confirm that, on all points, General de Pellieux's evidence is correct and authentic. I have not a single word more to say. I don't have that right; I repeat, gentlemen,
I do not have that right
.' To make further disclosures would put at risk relations with Germany, and might even lead to war. He emphasised the words, ‘I do not have that right,' and concluded his short address with an appeal to the jury. ‘And now, gentlemen, let me conclude by saying one thing. You are the jury, you are the Nation. If the Nation does not have confidence in the leaders of its Army, in those who bear the responsibility for its defence, they are ready to hand over that onerous task to others. You have only to speak. I will say nothing more.'

General de Boisdeffre left the stand, applauded by the anti-Dreyfusards in the well of the court. Maître Labori protested that he had not had an opportunity to cross-examine him about ‘the document that offered no semblance of value or authenticity', but the presiding judge refused to recall the august Chief of the General Staff. His had been a triumphant tour de force,
giving the shopkeepers and artisans on the jury the choice of either accepting the existence of secret but incontrovertible proof against Dreyfus or disarming the nation by precipitating the resignation of the chiefs of the General Staff.

They had no choice. Despite a dreary summing up by the Advocate General, Edmond Van Cassel, described by
La Libre Parole
as ‘like drizzle from a grey sky', and despite three days of argument by Labori, an emotional plea by Zola and an irrefutable case made by Albert Clemenceau on behalf of Alexandre Perrenx – all, in fact, bundling the innocence of Dreyfus with that of their clients, and all heckled by jeers and catcalls from the public gallery – the jury returned a verdict of guilty. Zola was sentenced to a year in prison, Perrenx to four months, and each was fined 3,000 francs. They were released pending an appeal.

There was jubilation among the anti-Dreyfusards, with shouts of ‘Long live the army!', ‘Death to Zola!' and ‘Death to the Jews!' Zola was escorted from the Palais de Justice through a hostile crowd by a phalanx of friends: had he been acquitted, said Georges Clemenceau, ‘none of them would have emerged alive'. The celebration of the verdict extended beyond the Palais de Justice to other parts of Paris and continued throughout the night. As the news spread to the provinces, groups gathered in bars and bistros to pass motions of support for the army. Crowds marched through the streets shouting ‘Long live the army!' and ‘Down with the Jews!' ‘I will not attempt to describe', wrote one of the brightest of the anti-Dreyfusard intellectuals, Maurice Barrès, ‘the excitement, sense of brotherhood, the joy at the way things had turned out.' He wrote this in
Le Figaro
, the paper that had once supported the Dreyfusard cause.

 

Zola and Perrenx were not the only ones to be punished for defying the army's High Command. The day after the verdict was delivered, the Prime Minister, Jules Méline, told the Chamber of Deputies that ‘There is no longer either a Zola trial or a Dreyfus trial; there is no trial at all . . . all this has to stop . . . And from now on, all those who would continue the struggle will no longer be arguing in good faith . . . We will apply to them the full severity of the laws, and if the arms at our disposal are insufficient, we will ask you for others.'

On 26 February, Colonel Georges Picquart was dismissed from the army for ‘grave misdeeds while in service'. He was also deprived of his pension. Louis Leblois was dismissed as deputy mayor of the 7th arrondissement in Paris by the Minister of the Interior, Louis Barthou; he was later suspended from the Paris bar for six months ‘for having consulted outside his office' and broken the professional confidence of his client, Picquart, to Scheurer-Kestner. Scheurer-Kestner, when he stood for re-election to the post of Vice-President of the Senate, suffered a decisive defeat. The eminent chemist Professor Édouard Grimaux, who had given evidence in favour of Zola, was dismissed from his post at the École Polytechnique.
31
Both Joseph Reinach and Jean Jaurès lost their seats in the general election in May.

12

The Pen versus the Sword

1: The Intellectuals

The presence of Édouard Grimaux on the list of those who suffered for their support of Dreyfus is evidence of a social phenomenon that is now common but had its genesis in the Dreyfus Affair – the rise as a power in moulding public opinion of ‘the intellectuals’. Just as Zola’s ‘J’accuse’ was the first intervention of an author in the affairs of state since Voltaire’s championing of the case of Jean Calas, a Protestant wrongly accused of murdering his son, so the recruitment in the Dreyfusard cause of writers, artists and academics set an example which was frequently to be followed by later generations. ‘I was the first Dreyfusard,’ Proust would claim (‘with pardonable exaggeration and pride’, adds his biographer George D. Painter), ‘for it was I who went to ask Anatole France for his signature.’
1

The petition to which Proust referred was for a review of the verdict on Dreyfus, issued the day after the publication of ‘J’accuse’. It was drawn up by Zola himself and Émile Duclaux, head of the Institut Pasteur. Duclaux, and Lucien Herr, the librarian at the École Normale Supérieure, circulated the petition among the scientists and scholars at their institutions. The net was extended by younger writers such as Marcel Proust who went around Paris collecting signatures. A second petition was organised by Professor Grimaux on 15 January. Among the signatories whose names remain familiar in the twenty-first century were the poet Charles Péguy and the painter Claude Monet.

The first petition was published on 14 January 1898 in
L’Aurore
under the headline ‘Manifesto of the Intellectuals’: the term ‘intellectual’ had been used before by Guy de Maupassant and by Maurice Barrès, but it was here that its trajectory into the contemporary consciousness began. The term was ridiculed – Barrès referred to the signatories in
Le Journal
as the ‘demi-intellectuals’, and the literary critic Ferdinand Brunetière, a convert to Catholicism, questioned the very idea that authors and academics should possess some superior wisdom when it came to the law. ‘The intervention of a novelist,’ he wrote, ‘even a famous one, in a matter of military justice seems to me as out of place as the intervention, in a question concerning the origins of Romanticism, of a colonel in the police force.’
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