An Officer and a Spy

It cannot be possible — and yet here it is, in black and white: the new Minister of War, Godefroy Cavaignac, who replaced Billot barely a week ago, claims to have ended the Dreyfus affair with a political coup de théâtre. ‘I’m going to show to the Chamber three documents. Here is the first letter. It was received in March 1894, when it came into the intelligence department of the Ministry of War. .’ Omitting only the names of the sender and the addressee, he goes through them one by one: the infamous message from the secret file (I am enclosing twelve master plans of Nice which that lowlife D gave me for you), a second letter which I do not recognise (D has brought me many very interesting matters), and the ‘absolute proof’ that turned the course of Zola’s trial:

I have read that a deputy is going to ask questions about Dreyfus. If someone asks in Rome for new explanations, I will say that I have never had any dealings with this Jew. If someone asks you, say the same, for no one must ever know what happened to him.

I hand the paper on to Zola. ‘He really declaimed all of this rubbish out loud? He must be crazy.’

‘You wouldn’t have thought so if you’d been in the Chamber,’ replies Clemenceau. ‘The entire place rose in acclamation. They think he’s settled the Dreyfus issue once and for all. They even passed a motion ordering the government to print thirty-six thousand copies of the evidence and post them in every commune in France!’

Labori says, ‘It’s a disaster for us, unless we can counter it.’

Zola asks, ‘Can we counter it?’

All three look at me.

That evening, after the concert, which includes the two great Wagner piano sonatas, I make my excuses to Aline and instead of staying for dinner, and with the music still playing in my head, I go to find Pauline. I know that she is lodging with an elderly cousin, a spinster, who has an apartment not far away, close to the Bois de Boulogne. At first, the cousin refuses to fetch her to the door: ‘Have you not done her enough harm already, monsieur? Is it not time to let her be?’

‘Please, madame, I need to see her.’

‘It is very late.’

‘It’s not yet ten, still light-’

‘Good night, monsieur.’

She closes the door on me. I ring the bell again. I hear whispered voices. There is a long pause and this time when the door opens Pauline is standing in her cousin’s place. She is dressed very soberly in a white blouse and dark skirt, her hair pulled back, no make-up. She might almost be a member of a religious order; I wonder if she is still going to confession. She says, ‘I thought we had agreed not to meet until things were settled.’

‘There may not be time to wait.’

She purses her lips, nods. ‘I’ll get my hat.’ As she goes into her bedroom, I see on the table in the little sitting room a typewriter: typically practical, she has taken the money I gave her and invested part of it in learning a new skill — the first time she has ever had an income of her own.

Outside, when we are round the corner and safely out of sight of the apartment, Pauline takes my arm and we walk into the Bois. It is a still, clear summer evening, the temperature so perfectly poised that there seems to be no climate, no barrier between the mind and nature. There are simply the stars, and the dry scent of the grass and the trees, and the occasional faint splash from the lake where two lovers drift in a boat in the moonlight. Their voices carry louder than they realise in the motionless air. But we have only to walk a few hundred paces, strike out from the sandy paths and enter the trees, and they, and the city, cease to exist.

We find a secluded place beneath an immense old cedar. I take off my tailcoat and spread it on the ground for us, loosen my white tie, sit down beside her and put my arm around her.

‘You’ll ruin your coat,’ she says. ‘You’ll have to get it cleaned.’

‘It doesn’t matter. I won’t need it for a while.’

‘Are you going away?’

‘You could put it that way.’

I explain to her then what I intend to do. I made my mind up listening to the concert; listening to the Wagner, in fact, which always has a heady effect on me.

‘I am going to challenge the government’s version of events in public.’