The Dreyfus Affair (26 page)

In his briefing by Boisdeffre, Picquart was warned that ‘the Dreyfus Affair is not over. It is only beginning. A new offensive by the Jews is to be feared.’ And when he went to visit the semi-paralysed Sandherr in his home, Picquart was advised to prepare himself by ‘fattening’ the secret file shown to the judges at the court martial. Picquart authorised Henry to re-employ François Guénée, the former undercover police officer, to see if he could dig up any more dirt,
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but nothing was found.

Upon taking command, Picquart instituted certain changes in procedure in the Statistical Section: he ruled that, while Henry should continue to receive the contents of the waste-paper baskets of the German Embassy delivered by Mme Bastian via the ‘ordinary route’, Picquart should be the first to see them. Captain Lauth was given the job of pasting the scraps of paper together. Whether or not Henry observed these instructions is unclear, but in early March, with his mother gravely ill at Pogny on the Somme, he had no time to take a close look at a heavy consignment he received from Mme Bastian at the Chapel of Sainte-Clothilde and deposited at the office. It was therefore Lauth who pasted together, and Picquart who was the first to see, a document which suggested that there was another traitor selling secrets to Maximilian von Schwartzkoppen.

There was at the time (and well into the twentieth century), a network of pneumatic tubes under the streets of Paris through which letter-telegrams were sent to and from post offices in the different arrondissements, thereby ensuring delivery within a few hours. The message had to be written on a form printed on blue paper – the
petit bleu
or ‘little blue’. The piece of paper retrieved from Schwartzkoppen’s waste-paper basket and pieced together by Lauth was the draft of such a letter-telegram that had never been sent.

Monsieur,

Above all I await a more detailed explanation than the one you gave me the other day of the matter in hand. I suggest that you give it to me in writing so I can decide whether to continue my connection with the house of R. or not. C.

The initial C. was known to be used by Schwartzkoppen, and the Statistical Section was also familiar with his handwriting from the many letters they had intercepted, and the handwriting of the
petit bleu
was not his. Nor was the handwriting of a second note on ordinary paper, written in pencil and also signed ‘C’, which – though partly illegible because the tear ran through some of the words – confirmed that a transaction was taking place between Schwartzkoppen and the person to whom the note was addressed. And the name of that person was spelled out in the appropriate box on the
petit bleu
: Monsieur le Commandant Esterhazy, 27, rue de la Bienfaisance, Paris.

This was the same Marie-Charles-Ferdinand Walsin-Esterhazy who had acted as second for the Jewish Captain André Crémieu-Foa in the duel he had fought with Édouard Drumont in June 1892. It was also the same Esterhazy who had served in the Statistical Section as a German translator sixteen years earlier. Henry, when he returned to the office and was told of the
petit bleu
, was incredulous that this ‘old friend’, whom he remembered with fondness, could be a spy. Moreover, Esterhazy was now a protégé of the suspect Jewish officer Maurice Weil, and because Weil himself was a friend of General Saussier, the Military Governor of Paris – his wife was the General’s mistress and Weil himself a
mari complaisant
– any investigation had to proceed with caution. It was perhaps for this reason, or because he was distracted by the death of his mother, or because he had a low opinion of General Gonse, responsible for the Statistical Section to the General Staff, or simply because he wanted to keep this interesting new card close to his chest, that Picquart did not immediately report the discovery of the
petit bleu
to his superiors. He instituted an inquiry under his own direction. Esterhazy was placed under surveillance and discreet inquiries were made by a police agent, whom Picquart met outside his office in front of the Louvre. Esterhazy was observed visiting the German Embassy, but it was to obtain a visa to visit Alsace for a superior officer, Colonel Abria. Picquart asked an officer he knew from his days at Saint-Cyr, Commandant Curé, who was serving in the same regiment as Esterhazy, what he thought of Esterhazy. Curé told him that Esterhazy led a dissolute life and was perennially short of money. When Picquart asked if he would obtain a specimen of Esterhazy’s handwriting, Curé refused, considering it dishonourable to spy on a fellow officer.

It was only in July, almost five months after the
petit bleu
had been filched from the German Embassy, that Picquart decided to report the matter to his superiors, going over the head of General Gonse to the Chief of the General Staff, General de Boisdeffre. Picquart’s urgent request led to a meeting in the General’s private railway coach in the Gare de Lyon when he arrived back from taking the waters at Vichy on the evening of 5 August 1896. Picquart told Boisdeffre about the
petit bleu
addressed to Commandant Esterhazy. The General had never heard of him, and received the news of a second traitor with apparent indifference. Feeling, perhaps, that too much had been made of the
bordereau
,
and too quickly, he did not want to repeat the same mistake. He, too, had other things on his mind: the Franco-Russian alliance which he had helped to negotiate as military attaché in St Petersburg had come to fruition. There was to be a state visit by Tsar Nicholas II and his Tsarina Alexandra in a couple of months’ time in which he, as Chief of the General Staff, would play a prominent role. A new scandal arising from another document stolen from their Embassy risked a fracas with the Germans at a particularly inopportune time.

Boisdeffre did not seem concerned that Picquart had yet to inform Gonse of what he had discovered. He suggested that he should tell the Minister of War, General Jean-Baptiste Billot, and Picquart went to see him the following day, 6 August. Billot approved the way in which Picquart had conducted his investigation to date, but would not as yet issue an order for a sample of Esterhazy’s handwriting to be sent to the Statistical Section. As a result, when Picquart again met Boisdeffre during the month of August, they discussed the matter on the assumption that there was no link between Esterhazy and Dreyfus. Dreyfus’s name came up only in the context of the dangers of proceeding prematurely against Esterhazy. ‘I don’t want a new Dreyfus Affair,’ Boisdeffre told Picquart.
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By the end of the month, however, Esterhazy had brought himself to the attention of the Minister, Billot, by writing to an officer serving in Billot’s cabinet, Commandant Theveney, and also to Billot’s
chef de cabinet
, Calmon-Maison, lobbying for a post at the Ministry of War. His application was supported by Maurice Weil, a friend of Theveney’s, and also by a deputy, Jules Roche, who was Vice-President of the Army Commission in the National Assembly. With these samples of Esterhazy’s handwriting actually in his office, Billot authorised Calmon-Maison to show them to Picquart. Studying them at his desk at the Statistical Section, Picquart was immediately struck by the similarity of the hand to that of the
bordereau
which had been so thoroughly scrutinised so many times.

Picquart went to the files and took out a photograph of the
bordereau
. He compared it to the letters written by Esterhazy. The handwriting seemed to him identical. But Picquart was no expert. He therefore told Lauth to take photographs of Esterhazy’s letters after blocking out the names. He summoned du Paty de Clam and asked him to compare the writing of the letters with that of the
bordereau
. ‘It’s the writing of Mathieu Dreyfus,’ said du Paty. Alphonse Bertillon, the prosecution’s favoured expert in the court martial of Dreyfus, was then asked for his opinion on the handwriting of Esterhazy’s letters. ‘Why, that’s the handwriting of the
bordereau
.’

‘And what if it were written quite recently?’ Picquart asked.

‘Then the Jews have trained someone in the course of a year to imitate his handwriting.’
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Picquart was unconvinced. He next asked the archivist, Gribelin, to reassemble the secret file shown to the judges at Dreyfus’s court martial so that he could familiarise himself with its contents, as Sandherr had suggested, to fend off any moves towards Dreyfus’s rehabilitation. He studied the different papers and the copy of du Paty’s commentary made by Sandherr and realised at once that they proved nothing. Clearly, Dreyfus had been convicted of Esterhazy’s crime.

On 1 September 1896, Picquart completed a report for General de Boisdeffre which made clear that Esterhazy was guilty of selling secrets to the Germans but merely noting in a footnote that the
bordereau
had been ‘the occasion of other legal action’. To conceal the length of time during which he had kept his dramatic discovery to himself, Picquart wrote that he had received the
petit bleu
only at the end of April of that year. He delivered his report in person. When he came to mention du Paty’s commentary on the secret dossier, Boisdeffre looked surprised. ‘Why was it not burned as agreed?’ That look of surprise was his only reaction. The General was otherwise non-committal. When Picquart saw him again the following day, he admitted that this new information had led to a sleepless night, but said that he wanted the opinion of General Gonse before making a decision.

Gonse was on sick leave at Cormeilles-en-Parisis. This ‘nullity made man’
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was certainly aware of Picquart’s low opinion of him, shown by the way in which Picquart had gone over his head to Boisdeffre. The ‘climate of mutual mistrust that existed between the two men complicated things from the outset’,
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with Picquart’s disdain for those he regarded as his intellectual inferiors coming up against Gonse’s skills at ‘administrative infighting’.
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During a two-hour briefing by Picquart, Gonse, like Boisdeffre, did not react to what he had been told, saying only at one point: ‘So we must have been wrong.’ And then, when the briefing on the two cases – those of Esterhazy and of Dreyfus – was completed: ‘Keep them separate.’

Neither Generals Gonse and de Boisdeffre nor the Minister Billot had yet decided what line they should take on Picquart’s revelations: their positions ‘were not yet set’. If Picquart had shown some tact, the historian Marcel Thomas believes, he might have coaxed them into accepting that there had been a miscarriage of justice. But ‘diplomacy had always been . . . the weakest quality of this stubborn Alsatian’.
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Moreover, inadvertently, Mathieu Dreyfus had made Picquart’s task more difficult by planting the story of his brother’s escape. On the same day as Picquart briefed Gonse in Cormeilles-en-Parisis, the story appeared in the
Daily Chronicle
and was picked up by the French press. Reassured by the Governor of French Guiana, the government issued a denial; but Dreyfus was back in the news, and on 8 September
Figaro
published an account of the pitiable condition of the prisoner on Devil’s Island which in turn provoked a rejoinder in
La Libre Parole
which declared that, quite to the contrary, Dreyfus was living ‘like a brute. He could read, but prefers to eat. He guzzles, he eats, and he drinks . . .’ Dreyfus remained a political hot potato.

On 10 September, an article appeared in
L’Éclair
which for the first time brought into the public domain the existence of the secret dossier. It purported to be an attack on those who were insisting upon the innocence of Alfred Dreyfus, and in so doing suggested that it might be appropriate to ‘reveal on what irrefutable grounds the court martial based its decision to brand as a traitor to the country the man who seems to be benefiting excessively from an inexplicable sense of pity and a feeling of doubt which seems more generous than perspicacious’. Four days later, a second article revealed unambiguously that an incriminating letter ‘was not included in the official dossier and that it was only in secret, in the deliberation room, out of the presence of the accused, that it was transmitted to the judges of the court martial’.
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It never became clear who leaked this information to
L’Éclair
. The existence of the secret dossier was well known, but the list of its contents, if not wholly accurate, was sufficiently detailed to suggest an insider. Picquart believed that Dreyfus’s supporters were behind the article and, in a letter to General Gonse enclosing a copy of the article, warned him of the danger of their being ‘overwhelmed, locked into an inextricable position’, if they did not act at once to arrest Esterhazy and rehabilitate Dreyfus. But Gonse prevaricated. He urged caution and calm. No irrevocable decisions should be taken. With Boisdeffre’s permission, Picquart went over the head of Gonse to Billot, the Minister of War.

At first Billot seemed open to Picquart’s line of thought; but at a second meeting, after Billot had talked with Boisdeffre, his attitude had changed. He talked of ‘military solidarity’ and said that Picquart’s discoveries were ‘military secrets’ that could not be shared with other members of the government. Picquart returned to Gonse in an attempt to persuade him either to arrest Esterhazy or at the very least to entrap him. Gonse refused. ‘What does it matter to you if that Jew stays on Devil’s Island?’