An Officer and a Spy

by Robert Harris

  In these circumstances, I have the honour of asking you to relieve me of my duties.

  Boisdeffre

  He retires at once to Normandy.

  Three days later Cavaignac also resigns, albeit defiantly (I remain convinced of the guilt of Dreyfus and as resolute as ever to fight against a revision of the trial); Pellieux submits his resignation; Gonse is transferred out of the Ministry of War and goes back to his regiment on half-pay.

  I assume, like most people, that it is all over: that if Henry could have arranged the forging of one document, it will be accepted that he could have done it many times, and that the case against Dreyfus has collapsed.

  But the days pass, Dreyfus stays on Devil’s Island and I remain in La Santé. And gradually it becomes apparent that even now the army will not acknowledge its mistake. I am refused parole. Instead I receive a notification that I will stand trial with Louis in three weeks’ time in an ordinary criminal court for illegally transmitting secret documents.

  On the eve of the hearing Labori visits me in prison. Normally he is ebullient, even aggressive; today he looks worried. ‘I have some bad news, I’m afraid. The army are bringing fresh charges against you.’

  ‘What now?’

  ‘Forgery.’

  ‘They’re accusing me of forgery?’

  ‘Yes, of the petit bleu.’

  I can only laugh. ‘You have to credit them with a sense of humour.’

  But Labori refuses to join in. ‘They will argue that a military investigation into forgery takes precedence over a civil proceeding. It’s a tactic to get you into army custody. My guess is the judge will agree.’

  ‘Well,’ I shrug, ‘I suppose one prison is much like another.’

  ‘That’s precisely where you’re wrong, my friend. The regime at Cherche-Midi is much harsher than here. And I don’t like the thought of you in the clutches of the army – who can tell what accidents might befall you?’

  The next day when I am taken into the criminal court of the Seine I ask the judge if I can make a statement. The courtroom is small and jammed with journalists – not just French, but international: I can even see the bald dome and massive side-whiskers of the most famous foreign correspondent in the world, Monsieur de Blowitz of the London Times. It is to the reporters that I address my remarks.

  ‘This evening,’ I say, ‘I may well be taken to Cherche-Midi, so this is probably the last time that I can speak in public before the secret investigation. I want it to be known that if Lemercier-Picard’s shoelaces or Henry’s razor are ever found in my cell, it will be murder, for never would a man such as I, even for one instant, contemplate suicide. I shall face this accusation, my head held high, and with the same serenity that I have always shown before my accusers.’

  To my surprise there is loud applause from the reporters, and I am escorted out of the chamber to shouts of ‘Vive Picquart!’ ‘Vive la verité!’ ‘Vive la justice!’

  Labori’s prediction is correct: the army wins the right to deal with me first, and the following day I am taken to Cherche-Midi – to be locked, I am told with relish, in the very same cell in which poor Dreyfus used to bash his head against the wall exactly four years before.

  I am kept in solitary confinement, forbidden most visitors and let out for only an hour a day into a tiny yard, six paces square, surrounded by high walls. I criss-cross it, back and forth, from corner to corner, and circle the edge, like a mouse trapped in the bottom of a well.

  The accusation is that I scratched off the original addressee of the telegram-card and wrote in Esterhazy’s name myself. The offence carries a sentence of five years. The questioning goes on for weeks.

  Tell us the circumstances in which you came into possession of the petit bleu . . .

  Fortunately, I haven’t forgotten that I asked Lauth to make photographic copies of the petit bleu soon after it was pieced together: eventually these are fetched and show clearly that the address had not been tampered with at that time; only subsequently was it altered as part of the conspiracy to frame me. Still I am kept in Cherche-Midi. Pauline writes, asking to visit me; I tell her not to – it might get into the papers, and besides, I don’t want her to see me in this condition; I find it easier to endure it alone. Occasionally the boredom is alleviated by trips to court. In November I lay out the whole of my evidence yet again, this time to the twelve senior judges of the Criminal Chamber, who are beginning the civil process of considering whether the verdict against Dreyfus is safe.

  My continued detention without trial becomes notorious. Clemenceau, who is allowed to visit me, proposes in L’Aurore ‘the nomination of Picquart to the post of Grand Prisoner of State, vacant since the Man in the Iron Mask’. At night, after they have turned out my light and I can no longer read, I can hear demonstrations both for and against me in the rue Cherche-Midi. The prison has to be protected by seven hundred troops; the hooves of the cavalry clatter down the cobbled streets. I receive thousands of letters of support, including one from the old Empress Eugénie. So embarrassing does this become to the government that Labori is told by officials of the Ministry of Justice that he should ask the civil courts to intervene and release me. I refuse to permit him to do so: I am more useful as a hostage. Every day that I am locked up, the more desperate and vindictive the army looks.

  Months pass, and then on the afternoon of Saturday 3 June 1899, Labori comes to see me. Outside the sun is shining strongly, penetrating even the grime and bars of the tiny window; I can hear a bird singing. He puts a large and inky palm to the metal grille and says, ‘Picquart, I want to shake your hand.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Must you always be so damned contrary?’ He rattles the steel mesh with his long, thick fingers. ‘Come: for once, just do as I ask.’ I place my palm to his and he says quietly, ‘Congratulations, Georges.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘The Supreme Court of Appeal has ordered the army to bring Dreyfus back for a retrial.’

  I have waited for this news for so long, and yet when it comes I feel nothing. All I can say is, ‘What reasons did they give?’

  ‘They cite two, both drawn from your evidence: first, that the “lowlife D” letter doesn’t actually refer to Dreyfus and shouldn’t have been shown to the judges without informing the defence, and second, that – how do they put it? Oh yes, here’s the line: “facts unknown to the original court martial tend to show that the bordereau could not have been written by Dreyfus.”’

  ‘What language you lawyers talk!’ I savour the legalese on my tongue as if it were a delicacy: ‘“facts unknown to the original court martial tend to show . . .” And the army can’t appeal against this?’

  ‘No. It’s done. A warship is on its way to pick up Dreyfus now and bring him back for a new court martial. And this time it won’t be in secret – this time the whole world will be watching.’

  23

  I AM RELEASED from gaol the following Friday, on the same day that Dreyfus is disembarked from Devil’s Island and begins the long voyage back to France aboard the warship Sfax. In light of the Supreme Court ruling, all charges against me are dropped. Edmond is waiting for me with his latest toy, a motor car, parked outside the prison gates to drive me back to Ville-d’Avray. I refuse to speak to the journalists who surround me on the pavement.

  The abrupt change in my fortunes disorientates me. The colours and noises of Paris in the early summer, the sheer aliveness of it, the smiling faces of my friends, the lunches and dinners and receptions that have been organised in my honour – all this after the solitary gloom and stale stink of my cell is overwhelming. It is only when I am with other people that I realise how much I have been affected. I find making conversation with more than one person bewildering; my voice is reedy in my ears; I am breathless. When Edmond takes me up to my room, I am unable to climb the stairs without pausing on every third or fourth step and clinging on to the handrail: the muscles that control my knees and ankles have atrophied. In the mirror I look pale
and fat. Shaving, I discover white hairs in my moustache.

  Edmond and Jeanne invite Pauline to stay and tactfully give her the room next to mine. She holds my hand under the table during dinner and afterwards, when the household is asleep, she comes into my bed. The softness of her body is both familiar and strange, like the memory of something once lived and lost. She is finally divorced; Philippe has been posted abroad at his request; she has her own apartment; the girls are living with her.

  We lie in the candlelight, facing one another.

  I stroke the hair from her face. There are lines around her eyes and mouth that weren’t there before. I have known her since she was a girl, I realise. We have grown old together. I am suddenly overwhelmed by tenderness towards her. ‘So you’re a free woman?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Would you like me to ask you to marry me?’

  A pause.

  ‘Not particularly.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because, my darling, if that is how you choose to pose the question, I don’t think there’s much point, do you?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m not much used to any sort of conversation, let alone this kind. Let me try again. Will you marry me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Seriously, you’re refusing me?’

  She takes her time answering. ‘You’re not the marrying sort, Georges. And now I’m divorced I realise that neither am I.’ She kisses my hand. ‘You see? You’ve taught me how to be alone. Thank you.’

  I am not sure how to respond.

  ‘If that’s what you want . . .?’

  ‘Oh yes, I’m perfectly content as we are.’

  And so I am denied a thing I never really wanted. Yet why is it I feel obscurely robbed? We lie in silence, and then she says, ‘What are you going to do now?’

  ‘Get fit again, I hope. Look at pictures. Listen to music.’

  ‘And afterwards?’

  ‘I’d like to force the army to take me back.’

  ‘Despite the way they’ve behaved?’

  ‘It’s either that or I let them get away with it. And why should I?’

  ‘So people must be made to pay?’

  ‘Absolutely. If Dreyfus is set free, it follows that the whole of the army leadership is rotten. There will be some arrests, I shouldn’t wonder. This is only the beginning of a war which may go on for some time. Why? You think I’m wrong?’

  ‘No, but I think perhaps you are in danger of becoming an obsessive.’

  ‘If I weren’t an obsessive, Dreyfus would still be on Devil’s Island.’

  She looks at me. Her expression is impossible to interpret. ‘Would you mind blowing out the candle, darling? I’m suddenly very tired.’

  We both lie awake in the darkness. I pretend to fall asleep. After a few minutes she gets out of bed. I hear her slip on her peignoir. The door opens and I see her for a moment silhouetted in the faint glow from the landing, and then she vanishes in the darkness. Like me, she has got used to sleeping alone.

  Dreyfus is landed in the middle of the night in a running sea on the coast of Brittany. He cannot be brought back to Paris for his retrial; it is considered too dangerous. Instead he is taken under cover of darkness to the Breton town of Rennes, where the government announces that his new court martial will be held, a safe three hundred kilometres to the west of Paris. The opening day of the hearings is fixed for Monday 7 August.

  Edmond insists on coming with me to Rennes, in case I need protection, even though I assure him there’s no need: ‘The government has already told me I’ll be provided with a bodyguard.’

  ‘All the more reason to have someone around who you can trust.’

  I don’t argue. There is an ugly, violent atmosphere. The President has been attacked at the races by an anti-Semitic aristocrat wielding a cane. Zola and Dreyfus have been burned in effigy. The Libre Parole is offering discounted fares to its readers to encourage them to travel to Rennes and break a few Dreyfusard heads. When Edmond and I leave for the railway station at Versailles early on Saturday morning, we are both carrying guns and I feel as though I am on a mission into enemy territory.

  At Versailles, we are met by a four-man bodyguard: two police inspectors and two gendarmes. The train, which originated in Paris, pulls in soon after nine, packed from end to end with journalists and spectators heading for the trial. The police have reserved us the rear compartment in the first-class section and insist on sitting between me and the door. I feel as though I am back in custody. People come to gawp at me through the glass partition. It is stiflingly hot. There is a flash as someone tries to take a photograph. I stiffen. Edmond puts his hand on mine. ‘Easy, Georges,’ he says quietly.

  The journey drags interminably. It is late in the afternoon by the time we pull into Rennes, a town of seventy thousand but without any suburbs as far as I can see. One minute the view is woodland and water meadows and a barge being pulled along a wide river by a horse, and then suddenly it is factory chimneys and stately houses of grey and yellow stone with blue slate roofs, trembling in the haze of heat. The two inspectors jump out ahead of us to check the platform, then Edmond and I clamber down, followed by the gendarmes. We are marched quickly through the station towards a pair of waiting cars. I am vaguely aware of a flurry of recognition in the crowded ticket hall, cries of ‘Vive Picquart!’ met by a few countering jeers, and then we are into the cars and driving up a wide, tree-lined avenue filled with hotels and cafés.

  We have barely travelled three hundred metres when one of the inspectors, sitting next to the driver, turns round in his seat and says, ‘That is where the trial will be held.’

  I know that the venue has been transferred to a school gymnasium in order to accommodate the press and public, and for some reason I have pictured a drab municipal lycée. But this is a fine building, a symbol of provincial pride, almost like a chateau: four storeys of high windows, pink brick and pale stone, capped by a tall roof. Gendarmes guard the perimeter; workmen unload a cart full of timber.

  We turn a corner.

  ‘And that,’ adds the inspector a moment later, ‘is the military prison where Dreyfus is being held.’

  It lies just across the street from the side entrance to the school. The driver slows and I glimpse a large gate set into a high, spiked wall, with the barred windows of a fortress just visible behind it; in the road, mounted cavalry and foot soldiers face a small crowd of onlookers. As a connoisseur of prisons, I would say it looks grim; Dreyfus has been in there a month.

  Edmond says, ‘Odd to think he’s so close to us, poor fellow. I wonder what sort of shape he’s in.’

  That’s what everyone wants to know. That is what has drawn three hundred journalists from across the globe to this sleepy corner of France; has led to the engagement of special telegraph operators to handle what are anticipated to be some two thirds of a million words of copy per day; has obliged the authorities to equip the Bourse de Commerce with a hundred and fifty desks for reporters; has lured cinematographers to set up their tripods outside the military gaol in the hope of recording a few seconds of jerky images of the prisoner crossing the yard. That is why Queen Victoria has sent the Lord Chief Justice of England to observe the opening of the trial.

  Until now, only four outsiders have been permitted to see him since his return to France: Lucie and Mathieu and his two lawyers, the faithful Edgar Demange, attorney at the first court martial, and Labori, who has been brought in by Mathieu to sharpen the attack on the army. I have not spoken to them. All I know of the prisoner’s condition is what I read in the press:

  On Dreyfus’s arrival at Rennes, the Préfet sent word to Mme Dreyfus that she could see him that morning. Accordingly at 8.30, her father, mother and brother walked with her to the prison. She alone was admitted to his cell on the first storey, and she remained till 10.15. A captain of the gendarmerie was present, but discreetly kept at a distance. She is said to have found him less altered than she expected, but she seemed much dejected on leav
ing the prison.

  Edmond has rented rooms in a quiet residential street, the rue de Fougères, in a pretty, white-shuttered, wisteria-covered house owned by Madame Aubry, a widow. A tiny front garden is separated from the road by a low wall. A gendarme is on guard outside. The house stands on a hill only a kilometre from the courtroom. Because of the summer heat, the hearings are scheduled to begin at seven and finish at lunchtime; our intention is to walk there early each morning.

  On Monday, I get up at five. The sun hasn’t risen but it is light enough for me to shave. I dress carefully in a black frock coat with the ribbon of the Legion of Honour in my buttonhole; the bulge of the Webley in my shoulder holster is barely visible. I pick up my cane and a high silk hat, knock on Edmond’s door, and together we set off down the hill towards the river, trailed by two policemen.

  The houses we pass are solid, prosperous bourgeois villas, their shutters tightly closed; nobody is awake up here. Down at the bottom of the hill, along the brick embankments of the river, laundrywomen in lace caps are already on the steps tipping out baskets of dirty washing, while three men wearing harnesses strain to drag a barge piled with scaffolding and ladders. They turn to watch us as we pass – two gentlemen in top hats followed by two gendarmes – but without curiosity, as if such a sight is commonplace at this hour of the morning.

  The sun is up by now; it’s already hot; the river an opaque algae-green. We cross a bridge and turn towards the lycée, to be greeted by a double line of mounted gendarmes drawn up across the empty street. Our papers are checked and we are directed to where a small crowd queues to pass through a narrow door. We go up a few stone steps, through another doorway, past a cordon of infantry with fixed bayonets, and abruptly we are in the courtroom.

  It is twenty metres long, perhaps, by fifteen wide, and two storeys high, filled with clear Breton daylight that pours in on both sides through a double tier of windows. The airy space is thronged with several hundred people. At the far end is a stage with a table and seven crimson-backed chairs; on the wall behind them a white plaster Christ nailed to a black wooden cross; below them, facing one another across the well of the court, the desks and chairs of the prosecution and defence; on both sides, running the length of the hall, the jammed narrow tables and benches of the press, whose numbers dominate the room; and at the back, behind another line of infantry, the public. The central section is reserved for the witnesses, and here we all are again – Boisdeffre, Gonse, Billot, Pellieux, Lauth, Gribelin. We carefully avoid each other’s gaze.