PRANCE. 



277 



in reference to a coming interpellation on Dreyfus 

 in the French Chamber, contains a warning from one 

 diplomatist to the other to say, if questioned, that 

 he never had any relations with this Jew. There 

 was the fact that Dreyfus when ordered to copy the 

 bordereau previous to his arrest trembled and was 

 unable to finish, pleading numbness. More convin- 

 cing were the confessions that Dreyfus is said to have 

 made on the day of his degradation. Capt. Le- 

 brun-Renaud reported him as saying that if he 

 handed over documents to the foreigner it was as a 

 bait to get more important ones, that they were 

 copies, not original documents, and that the min- 

 ister knew his motive. To Capt. d'Attel he is re- 

 ported to have said that what he handed over was 

 worth nothing, and if he had been left alone he 

 would have had more in return. Doubt was thrown 

 on these confessions by the statement of Major For- 

 /.ini-tti that Capt. Lebrun-Renaud told him at the 

 time that Dreyfus would not confess, and by the 

 fact that Capt. d'Attel died without reporting a 

 confession, the report coming from a friend who 

 conversed with him at the time. Both confessions, 

 therefore, seemed like afterthoughts. 



The bordereau, which formed the material evi- 

 dence against Dreyfus, was believed to have been 

 delivered to the military authorities by an Alsatian 

 porter in the employ of Col. Von Schwarzkoppen, 

 the German military attache. Lieut.-Col. Picquart, 

 chief of the intelligence bureau, who had presented 

 the proofs against Dreyfus in 1896, came upon a 

 telegram indicating a treasonable correspondence 

 between Major Walsin Ksterhazy, an infantry offi- 

 cer, and the German attache. Getting hold of 

 letters written by Esterhazy, he was struck with 

 the resemblance of the writing to that of the Dfey- 

 fus bordereau. Pursuing his inquiries, he found 

 that Esterhazy had taken pains to obtain the very 

 information contained in the bordereau. Mathieu 

 Dreyfus, M. Scheurer-Kestner, Vice- President of 

 the Senate, whom he interested in the matter, and 

 others besides Col. Picquart, became convinced that 

 Major Esterhazy, not Dreyfus, was the traitor and 

 the author of the bordereau. The handwriting was 

 more like his so much so that when confronted with 

 a facsimile he declared that Dreyfus had imitated 

 his hand. Esterhazy, by his antecedents, character, 

 and circumstances, was a more likely subject for 

 treasonable practices under pecuniary temptations, 

 and the indications appeared stronger when letters 

 of his were found in which he reviled the army and 

 its generals, and expressed a wish to be a Prussian 

 Uhlan and kill hosts of Frenchmen. Mathieu Drey- 

 fus had his suspicions directed to Esterhazy by a 

 broker who had done business for the latter, and 

 who recognized in a facsimile of the bordereau 

 printed in a newspaper the exact characteristics of 

 Esterhazy's handwriting. While Col. Picquart was 

 investigating the case against Esterhazy he was 

 dismissed from his post and sent on an insignificant 

 detail to Algeria, Col. Henry taking his place at the 

 War Office. The chiefs at the War Office after- 

 ward said that Picquart was sent away because he 

 occupied himself too much with the Dreyfus case. 

 He was ordered to the frontiers of Tunis, but the 

 general commanding the district would not allow 

 him to proceed, on account of the danger. While 

 he was away he learned from Col. Henry that he 

 was charged, not only with opening Esterhazy's 

 letters in the post, but with attempting to suborn 

 ;wo officers to say that a letter incriminating Ester- 

 aazy was written'by the German Emperor, and with 

 laving abstracted the document from the secret 

 ionier which fell into Esterhazy's hands. He also 

 Deceived mysterious telegrams purporting to come 

 from a female friend, who, using the familiar nick- 

 mnies of their private correspondence, let him know 



that his forgery of the document incriminating 

 Esterhazy had been discovered. Col. Picquart, on 

 receiving confirmation from his superiors of the 

 charges against him, placed his interests in the care 

 of an advocate, M. Leblois. 



Major Esterhazy said that he had first been in- 

 formed of the investigations of Col. Picquart by a 

 mysterious veiled lady, who made an appointment 

 with him and gave him a copy of one of the secret 

 documents relating to Dreyfus in the dossiers of 

 the War Office, which he delivered up again to the 

 Minister of War. On a denunciation lodged by 

 Mathieu, Major Esterhazy was tried by court-inar- 

 tial in January, 1898, on the charge of dealing with 

 a foreign power or its agents to incite them to com- 

 mit hostilities against France, or to procure the 

 means of so doing. The trial was determined on 

 by the Council of War in spite of the report of Gen. 

 Ravary censuring Lieut.-Col. Picquart and denoun- 

 cing the proceedings as aiming at a revision of the 

 Dreyfus trial. It was held expressly by reason of 

 the directness of the accusation and of the sensa- 

 tion caused by it in public opinion. After one 

 public sitting at which nothing was elicited except 

 the denials of Esterhazy one was held behind closed 

 doors, at the end of which the court unanimously 

 found that the accused was not the author of the 

 bordereau nor guilty of treason. The experts who 

 had testified in 1894 that the bordereau was in the 

 handwriting of Dreyfus, now gave as their opinion 

 that Dreyfus had prepared it by tracing the sepa- 

 rate words from documents written by Esterhazy. 

 After the trial Lieut.-Col. Picquart was placed under 

 arrest. The result of the secret trial of Esterhazy 

 was to redouble the sensation which it was held to 

 appease. Emile Zola, the novelist, printed an open 

 letter to the President of the republic in which he 

 accused Lieut.-Col. du Paty de Clam of having 

 been the author of the original judicial error com- 

 mitted in the conviction of Capt. Dreyfus and of 

 having afterward bolstered up his pernicious work 

 by absurd and culpable machinations. The chiefs 

 of the general staff Gen. Mercier, Gen. de Bois- 

 deffre. Gen. Gonse, and Gen. Pellieux with Major 

 Ravary and other subordinates, were charged with 

 being accomplices in the conspiracy against Capt. 

 Dreyfus, and the Minister of War, Gen. Billot, with 

 having in his hands certain proofs that the con- 

 victed man was innocent at the time when he 

 pledged his honor in the Chamber that he believed 

 him guilty, the motive being a purely political one, 

 that of shielding the general staff from the conse- 

 quences of the first miscarriage of justice. The first 

 court-martial, M. Zola declared, committed an il- 

 legal act, though acting, no doubt, in good faith, by 

 convicting an innocent man on the strength of a 

 document which was kept secret ; the second court- 

 martial screened the illegal act committed by the 

 first by knowingly acquitting a guilty man in obedi- 

 ence to orders. He challenged the persons whom 

 he accused to bring him before the assize court and 

 give him an opportunity to prove his charges in the 

 light of day. A petition signed by many scholars 

 and professional men of eminence called on the 

 Government to order a revision of the Dreyfus trial 

 on account of the violation of judicial forms and 

 the mysteries in which it was enveloped. The Min- 

 ister of Justice ordered the prosecution of M. Zola 

 and the publisher of the newspaper " Aurore," on 

 the complaint of the Minister of War, acting in 

 behalf of the military personages attacked. M. 

 Cavaignac in the Chamber interpellated the Gov- 

 ernment, asking for publication of the declara- 

 tions of Dreyfus to Capt. Lebrun-Renaud, so that 

 men of good will might find in them the necessary 

 elements of conviction. Student demonstrations in 

 Paris against Zola and the Jews were followed by 



