The Dreyfus Affair Read Online Free PDF Page A

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. 28
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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.’ 29
    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.’ 30 The Dreyfusards already suspected the existence of such a letter; Billot had