Why the Dreyfus Affair Matters by Louis Begley

Author:Louis Begley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2009-12-10T16:00:00+00:00

4

“the truth marches on and nothing will stop it”

As we have seen, after receiving Mathieu Dreyfus’s letter denouncing Esterhazy as the author of the bordereau and a traitor, General Billot found himself obliged to take action against the General Staff’s new protégé: he ordered General de Pellieux to conduct an inquiry into Esterhazy’s conduct. At the same time, in a move charged with black humor, he entrusted to General Gonse a secret investigation of Picquart, taking it out of the hands of Henry, a mere lieutenant colonel. Meanwhile, the minister had to prepare to face disclosures threatened by Auguste Scheurer-Kestner, one of the grand old men of French politics and yet another Alsatian whose patriotism had been inflamed by the loss of Alsace and Lorraine. Jailed under the Second Empire for his opposition to the authoritarian rule of Napoleon III, he was first elected to the Senate in 1872. In 1875 he was made inamovible (a life senator) and enjoyed an unchallenged reputation for high-minded probity. The huis clos imposed during the 1894 court-martial had disturbed Scheurer as a matter of principle, and so had rumors about a document having been given to the military judges in secret. He had spoken to friends about his disquiet but, unable to make his mind up concerning Dreyfus’s guilt, had taken no action and would have perhaps remained on the sidelines if he had not received, on July 13, 1897, a visit from Picquart’s lawyer, Leblois. The lawyer had heard about Scheurer’s vacillations. Since Picquart had authorized Leblois to reveal what he had been told to a government official if he thought it necessary, and remaining silent seemed to Leblois immoral, Leblois turned to Scheurer and disclosed in confidence everything he had learned from Picquart about Dreyfus’s innocence and Esterhazy’s guilt. These revelations left out one important fact: as we have seen, Leblois knew nothing about the petit bleu. Moreover, because he feared that by speaking to a senator instead of, for example, the minister of justice, he might be violating Picquart’s instructions, which authorized him specifically to speak to a government official, Leblois imposed foolish constraints of his own that were going to hobble Scheurer: he made the senator agree not to reveal that Picquart was the source of the information and not to divulge Esterhazy’s name to the Dreyfus family. Moreover, he withheld Gonse’s letters.

Scheurer agreed that as a first step he would make it widely known that he had finally come to believe in Dreyfus’s innocence based on a file of important evidence in his possession. He also promised to transmit the evidence to the president of the republic or the minister of justice and to demand a judicial review of the 1894 judgment, but only after he had been able to satisfy himself independently that the handwriting on the bordereau was Esterhazy’s. For that purpose he needed a suitable handwriting sample. It proved difficult to find. In the end Scheurer obtained one by sending Esterhazy a letter under an assumed name to which Esterhazy wrote a reply.

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