Robert Harris - An Officer and a Spy

Yesterday evening I was put in irons. Why, I know not. Since I have been here, I have always scrupulously observed the orders given me. How is it I did not go crazy during the long, dreadful night? (7 September 1896)

These nights in irons! I do not even speak of the physical suffering, but what moral ignominy, and without any explanation, without knowing why or for what cause! What an atrocious nightmare is this in which I have lived for nearly two years! (8 September)

Put in irons when I am already watched like a wild beast night and day by a guard armed with rifle and revolver! No, the truth should be told. This is not a security precaution. This is a measure of hatred and torture, ordered from Paris by those who, not being able to strike a family, strike an innocent man, because neither he nor his family will accept submissively the most frightful judicial error that has ever been made. (9 September)

I am disinclined to read any further. I have seen what the chafing of leg-irons can do to a prisoner’s flesh: cut it to the bone. In the insect-infested heat of the tropics, the torment must be unendurable. For a moment my pen hovers over the file. But in the end I simply mark it ‘Return to the Colonial Ministry’ and sign the circulation slip without comment.

Later that day I attend a meeting in Gonse’s office to settle last-minute security details for the Tsar’s visit. Sombre-faced men from the Interior and Foreign Ministries, the Sûreté and the Élysée Palace — men full of the grand self-importance of those who handle such issues — sit around the table and discuss the minutiae of the Imperial itinerary.

The Russian flotilla will be escorted into Cherbourg harbour on Monday at 1 p.m. by twelve ironclads. The President of the Republic will meet the Tsar and Tsarina. There will be a dinner for seventy in the Arsenal at 6.30, General Boisdeffre to be seated on the Tsar’s table. On Tuesday morning the Russian Imperial train will arrive in Versailles at 8.50 a.m. The Imperial party will transfer to the President’s train, which will arrive at the Ranelagh railway station at 10 a.m. It will take one and a half hours for the procession to cover the ten-kilometre route into Paris: 80,000 soldiers will be deployed for protection. All suspected terrorists have either been detained or turned away from Paris. After luncheon at the Russian Embassy, the Tsar and Tsarina will visit the Russian Orthodox church in the rue Daru. At 6.30 there will be a state banquet for two hundred and seventy at the Élysée, and at 8.30 fireworks in the Trocadéro followed by a gala performance at the Opéra. On Wednesday. .

My mind keeps wandering eight thousand miles to the shackled figure on Devil’s Island.

When the meeting is finished and everyone is filing out, Gonse asks me to stay for a moment. He could not be friendlier. ‘I’ve been thinking, my dear Picquart. When all this Russian fuss is over, I want you to undertake a special mission to the eastern garrison towns.’

‘To do what, General?’

‘Inspect and report on security procedures. Recommend improvements. Important work.’

‘How long will I be away from Paris?’

‘Oh, just a few days. Perhaps a week or two.’

‘But who will run the section?’

‘I’ll take it over myself.’ He laughs and claps my shoulder. ‘If you’ll trust me with the responsibility!’

On Sunday, I see Pauline at the Gasts’: the first time I have set eyes on her in weeks. She wears another dress she knows I like, plain yellow with white lace cuffs and collar. Philippe is with her and so are their two little girls, Germaine and Marianne. Usually I can cope perfectly well seeing the family all together, but on this day it is agony. The weather is cold and wet. We are confined indoors. So there is no escaping the sight of her immersed in her other life — her real life.

After a couple of hours I can’t keep up the pretence any longer. I go out on to the veranda at the back of the house to smoke a cigar. The rain is coming down cold and hard and mixed with hail like a northern European monsoon, stripping the few remaining leaves from the trees. The hailstones bounce off the saturated lawn. I think of Dreyfus’s descriptions of the incessant tropical downpours.

There is a soft chafing of silk behind me, a scent of perfume, and then Pauline is at my side. She doesn’t look at me but stands gazing out across the gloomy garden. I have my cigar in my right hand, my left hangs loosely. The back of her right hand barely brushes against it. It feels as if only the hairs are touching. To anyone coming up behind us we are just two old friends watching the storm together. But her proximity is almost overwhelming. Neither of us speaks. And then the door to the passage bangs open and Monnier’s voice booms out: ‘Let’s hope it’s not like this next week for their Imperial Majesties!’

Pauline casually moves her hand up to her forehead to brush away a stray hair. ‘Are you very much involved in it, Georges?’

‘Not much.’

‘He’s being modest, as usual,’ cuts in Monnier. ‘I know the part you fellows have played to make the whole thing secure.’

Pauline says, ‘Will you actually have an opportunity to meet the Tsar?’

‘I’m afraid you have to be at least a general for that.’

Monnier says, ‘But surely you could watch the parade, couldn’t you, Picquart?’

I puff hard on my cigar, wishing he would go away. ‘I could, if I could be bothered. The Minister of War has allocated places for my officers and their wives at the Bourbon Palace.’

‘And you’re not going!’ cries Pauline, pretending to punch my arm. ‘You miserable republican!’

‘I don’t have a wife.’

‘That’s no problem,’ says Monnier. ‘You can borrow mine.’

And so on Tuesday morning, Pauline and I edge along the steps of the Bourbon Palace to our allotted places, whereupon I discover that every officer of the Statistical Section has accepted the minister’s invitation and has brought his wife — or in Gribelin’s case his mother. They make no attempt to hide their curiosity when we appear and I realise, too late, how we must look in their eyes — the bachelor chief with his married mistress on his arm. I introduce Pauline very formally, emphasising her social position as the wife of my good friend Monsieur Monnier of the quai d’Orsay. That only makes it sound more suspicious. And although Henry bows briefly and Lauth nods and clicks his heels, I notice that Berthe Henry, the innkeeper’s daughter, with her parvenu’s snobbery, is reluctant even to take Pauline’s hand, while Madame Lauth, her mouth tightly crimped in disapproval, actually turns away.

Not that Pauline seems to care. We have a perfect view, looking straight down the bridge, across the Seine, half a kilometre to the obelisk in the place de la Concorde. The weather is sunny but windy. The vast tricolours hanging off the buildings — the red, white and blue stripes vertical for France, horizontal for Russia — snap and billow against their moorings. The crowds on the bridge are ten or twelve deep and have been waiting since dawn. It is reported to be the same all across the city. According to the Préfecture of Police, one and a half million spectators are lining the route.

From the place de la Concorde comes the faint roar of thousands of voices cheering, and then gradually at first but increasing in volume, as in a symphony, an underlying percussion of horses’ hooves on cobbles. A shimmering line of light appears spread across the wide thoroughfare, and then more lines behind it, which gradually resolve into helmets and breastplates glinting in the bright sun — wave after wave of lancers and cuirassiers, bobbing up and down on their horses, banners streaming, twelve abreast, riding across the bridge. On and on they come, heading straight for us at a stiff trot, until it seems they will mount the steps and charge right through us. But then abruptly at the last moment they sweep round to our right, down the boulevard Saint-Germain. Behind them come the native cavalry — the Chasseurs d’Afrique, the Algerian Saphis, the Arab caids and chiefs, their horses shying at the racket of the crowd — and then after these is the procession of open state carriages — the President, the Russian ambassador, the leaders of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, and all the other prominent figures of the Republic, including General Billot. There is a particularly loud cheer for Boisdeffre in his plumed helmet, which he doffs from side to side: the gossip is that after this he could be Foreign Minister.