The Dreyfus Affair (31 page)

Schwartzkoppen used this information in a report he sent to his superiors in Berlin in January 1896 which was intercepted and studied by Georges Picquart. But by this time Schwartzkoppen had decided that Esterhazy was no longer providing value for money. A final test was to ask Esterhazy for information on a matter of genuine interest to the Nachrichtenbureau,
the design of a new rifle that was to replace the old Lebel rifle of 1886. Esterhazy plagiarised an article written by a Colonel Ortus of the circle around
L’Épée et la Plume
on ‘The Rifle of the Future’ but also made inquiries at the army base in Châlons and had a subordinate make sketches of its design which he delivered to Schwartzkoppen. This was ‘the matter in hand’ mentioned in the
petit bleu
, and the reason the letter was never sent was that Schwartzkoppen had decided that ‘further explanations’ would be pointless and so had returned the drawings to Esterhazy with a note instead. In March 1896, Schwartzkoppen’s relations with Esterhazy finally came to an end.
18

3: The Powerful Protectors

The loss of the fees paid by Schwartzkoppen was not as catastrophic for Esterhazy as it would have been the year before: he had developed some other sources of income to supplement his army pay. Under the alias of Rohan-Chabot, he went into partnership with a madame in a brothel at 43, rue du Rocher, supplying 1,500 names of potential clients and investing 2,000 francs.
19
He was also paid for the research he did for the Deputy, Jules Roche, and his friend Biot on
La Libre Parole
. Another friend on
La Libre Parole
,
Ponchon de Saint-André, who wrote under the byline Boisandré, commissioned Esterhazy’s article denouncing German espionage. Esterhazy had also taken over from Boisandré as his mistress a young
demi-mondaine
, Marguerite Pays, whom he had met on a train in 1895. Devoted to Esterhazy, she too was a source of funds, provided by other lovers. Both she and Esterhazy remained on good terms with Boisandré, who was dazzled by Esterhazy’s gift of the gab. ‘This circle . . . on the fringes of gallantry, journalism and politics was, between 1895 and 1897, the world in which Esterhazy swam like a fish in water.’
20

Esterhazy received a fortuitous windfall in October 1896 on the death of a cousin, Paul Esterhazy. The heirs of Paul Esterhazy were the deceased’s widow, his daughters and a son Christian who were persuaded to accept the advice of their worldly cousin Charles on what to do with their money. Christian sent Esterhazy 40,000 francs on the understanding that it would be invested by the Rothschilds, Esterhazy’s friends. By the end of 1897, the entire sum had been dissipated, either spent by Esterhazy himself or lost in speculations on the Bourse.
21

Esterhazy also had high hopes, as he had told Schwartzkoppen, that the influence of his friend Maurice Weil on General Saussier, and that of the Deputy Jules Roche, would secure him a post in the cabinet of the Minister of War. However on 11 November 1896, the day after
Le Matin
had published a photograph of the
bordereau
, Maurice Weil received the anonymous letter signed ‘Commandant Pierre’ warning him that he was to be named by the Deputy Castelin, together with Esterhazy, as an accomplice in the Dreyfus Affair. Weil told Esterhazy about what was said in the letter, and he also told a member of the Armed Services Commission who in turn passed it on to the Minister of War, Jean-Baptiste Billot. In the event, Castelin did not mention Weil or Esterhazy in the National Assembly: his questions to Billot were innocuous, and the crisis passed (
see here
).

However, Weil was shaken by both the anonymous letter and the picture of the
bordereau
.
He had had many letters from Esterhazy and so must have recognised the similarity of his handwriting. Certainly, from that moment on he began to distance himself from Esterhazy and finally broke off relations altogether. This put Esterhazy into a rage. He persuaded his friends on
La Libre Parole
and
L’Intransigeant
to mount a campaign against Saussier and Billot, and even threatened, should his reasonable expectations of promotion not be met, to leave the army and ‘tell a story that will create a scandal throughout the world’.
22

After the scare of Castelin’s questioning of Billot in the Chamber of Deputies in November 1896, the immediate danger that Esterhazy might be named as the traitor had receded but, because the handwriting of the
bordereau
was in the public domain, it could only be a matter of time before someone other than Picquart made the connection, as was to be the case with the South American stockbroker Jacques de Castro. Therefore Commandant Henry continued to manufacture evidence against both Picquart and Dreyfus: the Statistical Section became, in the words of Hannah Arendt, ‘a common fake factory’.
23
He tampered with the
petit bleu
to make it seem that Picquart had altered its contents; and, encouraged by the success of his first forgery, a letter was sent to Dreyfus on Devil’s Island from a certain ‘Weiss’ with a cryptic message written in invisible ink between the lines.
24
This was intercepted by the prison authorities and stimulated their suspicions that Dreyfus’s friends were planning an escape. Henry also forged a letter to Picquart from the private secretary of his friend the Comtesse de Comminges that seemed to suggest that he was in cahoots with the Dreyfusards. This was ‘inadvertently opened’ at the War Ministry and shown to Billot to convince him that Picquart’s mission abroad should be extended. Faked telegrams were sent to Picquart to compromise him, and Picquart himself indulged in subterfuge in his correspondence – not to conceal any contacts with the Dreyfusards but to protect the reputation of a married woman, the wife of a diplomat, Pauline Monnier, with whom, before leaving Paris, he had embarked upon an affair.
25

With Picquart out of the way and the Minister of War, Billot, reassured of Dreyfus’s guilt by the letter forged by Henry, Generals Gonse and de Boisdeffre felt they had matters under control. It was only in the summer of 1897, when Auguste Scheurer-Kestner began lobbying ministers and the President himself, that they again became alarmed. Esterhazy was being named as the real traitor and all the precautions taken to protect him would prove futile if Esterhazy himself was to panic and do something rash.

On 16 October 1897, after consulting Boisdeffre, Gonse called in the chief architect of the original case against Dreyfus, the monocled, moustachioed Major du Paty de Clam, to take charge. It was difficult to know how to proceed. Esterhazy was under surveillance and so any meeting would be noted by the police. A letter from an identifiable correspondent, even if not intercepted, would be compromising, so du Paty, with Henry’s help, composed an anonymous letter to Esterhazy warning him that the Dreyfus family in collusion with Colonel Picquart intended to make him the scapegoat for Dreyfus’s crime. ‘You are hereby forewarned of what these scoundrels plan to do to ruin you. It is now up to you to defend your name and the honour of your children. Act quickly, for the family is about to act to assure your doom.’
26
The letter, signed ‘Espérance’, was sent to Esterhazy at his country house, the Château de Dommartin near Sainte-Ménehould in the Marne.

On reading the letter, Esterhazy was appalled. He immediately left for Paris and for three days lay low in the flat of his mistress, Marguerite Pays. ‘I am dishonoured,’ he told her. ‘I will have to leave the country. I will have to kill myself.’ He felt isolated and abandoned, not knowing as yet of his guardian angels in the Statistical Section and on the General Staff. On 22 October, the archivist from the Statistical Section, Félix Gribelin, called at the flat of Marguerite Pays wearing blue-tinted spectacles and a fake beard. He left a note inviting Esterhazy to meet with ‘powerful protectors who wanted to save him and to whom he would well advised to listen’ at the corner of the Vanne reservoir in the Parc Montsouris.

Before keeping the rendezvous, Esterhazy went first to the Crédit Lyonnais Bank, then to the offices of the newspaper
La Patrie
and finally to the German Embassy to see Schwartzkoppen. The two men had not met for more than a year. Once alone with his former paymaster, and the door closed, Esterhazy told him that their traffic in military secrets had been discovered, and that if something was not done, Schwartzkoppen would be disgraced and Esterhazy sent to replace Dreyfus on Devil’s Island. Esterhazy’s solution: Schwartzkoppen must write to Lucie Dreyfus to confirm her husband’s guilt. Schwartzkoppen’s response: ‘Major, I think you are quite mad!’

Esterhazy sobbed, raved and at one point threatened Schwartzkoppen with a pistol, but eventually calmed down and was persuaded to leave. After calling on a senator on the rue de Médicis, a ‘friend’ of Marguerite Pays, he went to keep his appointment in the Parc Montsouris to the south of the city. He waited at the designated spot on the corner of the Vanne reservoir. Eventually a carriage drew up and two men got out. One was Gribelin wearing his blue-tinted spectacles and false beard. The other, also with a false black beard, was Commandant du Paty de Clam. A third man, Commandant Henry, who might have been recognised by Esterhazy, remained in the carriage.

Du Paty told Esterhazy what he already knew from the ‘Espérance letter’ – that he was being set up as the patsy, the
homme de paille
, for the crimes of Alfred Dreyfus. Esterhazy protested that he was innocent: du Paty assured him that they knew that only too well. He produced a photograph of the
bordereau
. Esterhazy acknowledged the similarity of the handwriting and started to say that this might be his because Colonel Sandherr had in fact employed him as a double agent, but he was cut short by Gribelin. The handwriting on the
bordereau
was that of Dreyfus. That was not to be questioned.
27

From the Parc Montsouris, Esterhazy returned to the German Embassy on the rue de Lille where he told Schwartzkoppen about his meeting ‘with two representatives of the Ministry of War’. It would seem that they were both off the hook. The two men parted for the last time. A week later, Schwartzkoppen was recalled to Germany to take up an elite appointment as the commanding officer of the 2nd Kaiser Franz Ferdinand Regiment of Grenadiers in Berlin. He was also awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Légion d’Honneur by the French government
.

Schwartzkoppen’s recall was no doubt caused by fear that he might be caught up in the growing furore around the Dreyfus Affair. The German Ambassador, Graf Münster von Derneburg, still trusting in Schwartzkoppen’s assurances that he did not engage in espionage, was sorry to see him go. ‘I sincerely regret that you are no longer here,’ he wrote to him soon after his departure.

The fact that the newspapers have been connecting your departure with Dreyfus astonishes me, but hardly worries me. We both well know that poor Dreyfus, as far as we were concerned, was absolutely innocent . . . Esterhazy is defending himself quite poorly and appears to be a man of rather dubious honour.

All of Paris thinks of nothing but Dreyfus . . . We miss you here a great deal. Very amicably yours, Münster

Others were equally unhappy to see Schwartzkoppen leave Paris – the beautiful Hermance de Weede, no doubt, and the Italian military attaché, Alessandro Panizzardi. Writing to Schwartzkoppen on 11 December 1897, Panizzardi told him how much he missed him, adding: ‘I cannot sleep at night.’
28

Esterhazy’s encounter with du Paty and Gribelin in the Parc Montsouris was followed up with regular meetings at which his protectors dropped their disguise. Marguerite Pays and Esterhazy’s nephew, Christian Esterhazy, acted as intermediaries, and Esterhazy would work on a common strategy to thwart the Dreyfusards with either du Paty, Gribelin or Henry by concocting further evidence against both Dreyfus and Picquart – in Picquart’s case to establish that he was in league with the Dreyfusards – with letters and telegrams that would be intercepted either by the police or by the Statistical Section itself, and shown to the ministers concerned.

There were leaks in the press which fed the furore referred to by Münster von Derneburg. Esterhazy, with his journalistic flair, was adept at dramatising his plight. He wrote to the President, Félix Faure, describing the anonymous letter from ‘Espérance’ that had alerted him to the conspiracy against him, assuring him that ‘An Esterhazy fears no one but God’ and warning him that ‘my House is sufficiently illustrious in the glories of the history of France and the histories of the great European courts for the government of my country to be concerned lest that name be dragged through the mud’. In a second letter, he said that ‘Espérance’, the author of the letter in question, was a ‘generous woman who warned me of the horrible plot hatched against me by Dreyfus’s friends with the assistance of Colonel Picquart’. She had stolen a letter from Colonel Picquart who in turn had taken it from a foreign legation – a letter ‘most compromising for certain important diplomats. If I do not obtain either support or justice . . . this photograph, which is at this moment in a safe place abroad, will be immediately published.’ For many weeks, the true identity of this mysterious lady titillated the readers of the national press.