Robert Harris - An Officer and a Spy

I made sure to be at the court building early. It was not yet light when I made my way into the crowded vestibule. The first person I met was Major Henry: when he saw me, he jerked his head back in surprise.

‘Major Picquart! What are you doing here?’

‘The minister has asked me to attend as his observer.’

‘Has he, by God?’ Henry pulled a face. ‘Aren’t we grand these days? So you’re to be his stool pigeon? We’ll have to watch what we say when you’re around!’ He tried to make it sound as if he was making a joke, but I could tell he was affronted, and from that moment on he was always wary of me. I wished him good luck and climbed the stone staircase to the courtroom on the first floor.

The building was a former convent with low, thick arched doors and roughly plastered whitewashed walls that had little nooks built into them for icons. The chamber set aside for the hearing was barely larger than a classroom and already packed with reporters, gendarmes, soldiers and those peculiar members of the general public whose pastime is attending trials. At the far end, on a platform erected beneath a mural of the Crucifixion, was a long table for the judges, covered with green baize. Carpets had been nailed up over the windows — whether to shut out prying eyes or the December cold I never did discover, but the effect was claustrophobic and curiously sinister. There was a plain wooden chair facing the judges for the accused, a small desk behind it for his lawyer and another nearby for the prosecutor. A chair just to the side of and behind the judges was reserved for me. There was nowhere for the spectators to sit; they could only press themselves against the walls. I took out my notebook and pencil and sat down to wait. At one point du Paty pushed his way in briefly, followed by General Gonse. They surveyed the scene, then left.

Soon afterwards the main players began to appear. There was Maître Edgar Demange, Dreyfus’s attorney, exotic in his black robes and cylindrical black cap but otherwise the epitome of a dull middle-aged farmer with a broad, clean-shaven face and straggling wispy sideburns. The prosecutor was Brisset, thin as a sabre, in the uniform of a major. And finally there came the seven military judges, also in uniform — a colonel, three majors and two captains, led by the president of the court, Colonel Émilien Maurel. He was a shrivelled and unhealthy-looking elderly figure: I learned later he was suffering from piles. He took his place in the centre of the long table and addressed the court in a peevish voice: ‘Bring in the accused!’

All eyes went to the back of the court and the door opened and in he came. He was slightly bent from lack of exercise, grey from exhaustion and the darkness of his cell, thin from his poor diet: in ten weeks he had aged ten years. And yet, as he advanced into the room, escorted by a lieutenant of the Republican Guard, he held his head at a defiant angle. I even detected a hint of anticipation in his step. Perhaps Mercier was right to be worried. Quite the grand seigneur , I noted, amp; eager to begin . He halted in front of Colonel Maurel and saluted.

Maurel coughed to clear his throat and said, ‘State your name.’

‘Alfred Dreyfus.’

‘Place of birth?’

‘Mulhouse.’

‘Age?’

‘Thirty-five.’

‘You may sit.’

Dreyfus lowered himself into his place. He took off his cap and placed it under his seat. He adjusted his pince-nez and glanced around. I was in his direct line of sight. Almost at once his gaze settled on me. I must have held his stare for perhaps half a minute. What was in his expression? I couldn’t tell. But I sensed that to look away would be to concede that I had played a shabby trick on him, and so I wouldn’t do it.

In the end, it was the prosecutor, Brisset, who made us break our contest and look away at the same time. He rose and said, ‘Monsieur President, in view of the sensitive nature of this case, we would like to request that this hearing be held in private.’

Demange immediately lumbered to his feet. ‘Monsieur President, we object strongly. My client has the right to be treated the same as anyone else who is accused.’

‘Monsieur President, under normal circumstances, nobody would argue with that. But the evidence against Captain Dreyfus necessarily includes important matters of national defence.’

‘With all due respect, the only actual evidence against my client consists of just one sheet of disputed writing. .’

A murmur of surprise went round the room. Maurel gavelled it away. ‘Maître Demange! Be silent, please! You are too experienced an advocate to be excused that type of trick. This court will stand adjourned while we retire to make our decision. Take the accused back to his cell.’

Dreyfus was led away again. The judges filed out after him. Demange looked content with this first exchange. As I later warned Mercier, whatever happened, he had smuggled out to the public a message about the thinness of the prosecution’s case.

Fifteen minutes later the judges returned. Maurel ordered that Dreyfus should be retrieved from his cell. He was conducted back to his place, apparently as unperturbed as ever. Maurel said, ‘We have considered the matter carefully. This case is highly unusual in that it touches on the gravest and most sensitive issues of national security. In these matters one simply cannot be too careful. Our ruling therefore is that all spectators should be excluded immediately and that these hearings should proceed in private.’ A great groan of complaint and disappointment arose. Demange tried to object, but Maurel brought down his gavel. ‘No, no! I have made my decision, Maître Demange! I shall not debate it with you. Clerk, clear the court!’

Demange slumped back. Now he looked grim. It took barely two minutes for the press and public to be ushered out by the gendarmes. When the clerk closed the door, the atmosphere was completely altered. The room was hushed. The carpeted windows seemed to seal us off from the outside world. Only thirteen remained: Dreyfus and his defender and prosecutor, the seven judges, the clerk, Vallecalle, a police official and me.

‘Good,’ said Maurel. ‘Now we can begin to consider the evidence. Would the prisoner please stand? Monsieur Vallecalle, read the indictment. .’

For the next three afternoons, at the end of each day’s session, I would hurry down the stairs, past the waiting journalists — whose questions I would ignore — stride out into the winter dusk, and pace along the icy pavements for seven hundred and twenty metres exactly — I counted them each time — from the rue du Cherche-Midi to the hôtel de Brienne.

‘Major Picquart to see the Minister of War. .’

My briefings of the minister always followed the same pattern. Mercier would listen with close attention. He would ask a few terse and pertinent questions. Afterwards he would send me off to Boisdeffre to repeat what I had just said. Boisdeffre, only recently returned from the funeral of Tsar Alexander III in Moscow, his noble head no doubt stuffed full of matters Russian, would hear me through to the end courteously and mostly without comment. From Boisdeffre I would be taken in a War Ministry carriage to the Élysée Palace. There I would brief the President of the Republic himself, the lugubrious Jean Casimir-Perier — an uncomfortable assignment, as the President had long suspected his Minister of War of scheming behind his back. In fact Casimir-Perier was by this time something of a prisoner himself — cut off in his gilded apartments, ignored by his ministers, reduced to a purely ceremonial role. He made clear his contempt for the army by not once inviting me to sit. His response to my narrative was to punctuate it throughout with sarcastic remarks and snorts of disbelief: ‘It sounds like the plot of a comic opera!’