"Paris" for several months, and it was only on quitting Médan for
his town residence late in the autumn of 1897 that he began to give
serious attention to the Dreyfus case. The various attempts which both
the Dreyfus family, through M. Bernard Lazare, and Colonel Picquart,
influenced by his own discoveries, had made in 1896 to bring about
a careful inquiry into the whole affair had yielded little result;
but in 1897 the matter was taken up by M. Scheurer-Kestner, a much
respected vice-president of the Senate, who came to the conclusion
that the offence for which Dreyfus had been convicted had really been
perpetrated by Major Walsin-Esterhazy. The latter received warning of
what was brewing, and about the time when Zola moved from Médan into
Paris, as mentioned above, the anti-Semitic press, having espoused
Esterhazy's cause, was again thundering against the Jews. Some of
Zola's friends interested in the Affair--as everybody called it--spoke
to him about it at length. Before long, indeed, several documents were
shown him at his house, and left a deep impression on his mind. He had
no personal acquaintance with the Dreyfus family; he never saw Madame
Dreyfus till she appeared in court during his own trial in February,
1898; and if on a dozen occasions, at the utmost, he met M. Mathieu
Dreyfus and discussed the case with him, all such interviews took place
posterior to his intervention. This was based on a dispassionate
study of the facts and documents laid before him. He weighed them with
his usual care, exactly as he weighed the documents he collected for
his books; and it must not be imagined that the charges he eventually
formulated were brought in any haphazard fashion. Zola's intellect, one
may repeat it, was essentially systematic, and his judgment of facts
and his logical powers were exceptionally good.[7] At the time of his
trial in Paris there were many gaps in his information, undoubtedly,
but its full extent was not then revealed, owing to the extraordinary
course imparted to the proceedings by the judge and the military men.
Various facts which were not publicly divulged until much later were
kept back deliberately by the novelist's counsel, Maître Labori, as
a matter of strategy, and it follows that Zola's action was far less
quixotic than some people then took it to be.
[Illustration: Photo by Ê. Zola--Penn, Oatlands Chase, Surrey (Denise,
Jacques, Violette Vizetelly)]
[Illustration: Photo by É. Zola Summerfield, Addlestone, Surrey]
It has been assumed occasionally that the novelist's intervention
began with his famous letter, "J'Accuse." That, of course, is an
error. One day in November, 1897, while he was out walking, he met
M. Fernand de Rodays, the director of "Le Figaro," and they talked
of the Affair together. Zola realised that M. de Rodays had arrived
at much the same conclusions as himself, and he thereupon offered
to write some articles. M. de Rodays assented, and on November
25--ten days after M. Mathieu Dreyfus had formally denounced Major
Walsin-Esterhazy as author of the notorious _bordereau_[8]--"Le Figaro"
printed a first contribution from Zola's pen, an article entitled
"M. Scheurer-Kestner." On December 1 came a second, "Le Syndicat,"
which was followed on December 5 by a third, called "Procès-Verbal."
Those articles were temperately worded; they appealed to the reader's
judgment, and protested in a sober way against all attempts to inflame
the popular passions. They certainly indicated a belief in Dreyfus's
innocence, and asked for full inquiry; and on that account they angered
the readers of "Le Figaro," who, being for the most part society
people, sympathised with the Jew-baiters. Moreover the anti-Semitic
and Nationalist prints, alarmed to find such a capable man as Zola
espousing the cause of Dreyfus, at once attacked him savagely. He then
had to withdraw from "Le Figaro," whose director, while adhering to
his personal opinion in favour of Dreyfus, was unable to withstand the
clamour of his readers and shareholders.
As it seemed doubtful whether any other paper of standing would print
what Zola might write about the case, and as he desired to retain full
liberty of action, he decided to continue his campaign with pamphlets,
and a first was published on December 14. It was called a "Letter to
Young Men"--that is the students and others, who at one moment ran
about the streets shouting "Long live the army! Down with the Jews!"
and at another assembled outside the homes of M. Scheurer-Kestner and
others and hooted them. Zola expostulated with these young fellows,
pointed out the folly and baseness of their conduct, and exhorted
them to strive for truth, humanity, and justice. He declared, too,
_en passant_, that the Chamber of Deputies had just covered itself
with shame by a vote of censure which it had presumed to pass on those
whom it accused of "troubling the public conscience by an odious
campaign,"--that campaign being simply the appeal for truth and equity
made by himself and others.
The pamphlet[9] stirred up the feelings of those for whom it was
intended. They resented it, and began to demonstrate against
Zola himself. Two days later, December 16, his good friend and
fellow-novelist, Alphonse Daudet, died; and when Zola appeared as one
of the pall-bearers at the funeral, so angry were the passions of the
crowd that the respect due to the dead was forgotten, and groans and
hisses were heard again and again as the _cortège_ took its way to the
cemetery of Père-Lachaise.
There, by the graveside, Zola read a pathetic farewell to his departed
friend and comrade, of whose corpse, in accordance with usage, he had
been one of the watchers a few nights previously. His hand shook as he
fingered his manuscript, and there was poignant emotion in his voice
when he evoked the memory not only of Daudet, but also of those who had
gone before,--Flaubert and Edmond de Goncourt. "They were giants, good
giants, artisans of truth and beauty," he said; "and now, great even
as they were, of equal stature by virtue of the work he accomplished,
Daudet has gone to join them in the grave, to repose beside them like a
brother, in the same glory. We were four brothers: three have departed
already, I remain alone."
Doubtless his feelings of loneliness were intensified by the groans,
the cries he had heard, the ill-disguised hostility also of some of
the mourners around him. But Zola was a stubborn man, great by reason
of that very stubbornness. No attacks, no insults, no sufferings,
could ever turn him from any purpose that he resolved upon in the
plenitude of his intellect, guided by his sense of right and wrong.
Soon after Daudet's funeral, that is on January 6, 1898, he issued
another pamphlet, this time a "Letter to France,"[10] in which, after
referring to the approaching arraignment of Major Walsin-Esterhazy
before a court-martial, he protested against the violence of the press,
and while disclaiming all idea of insulting the army, pointed out the
dangers of militarism, the threatening shadow of the sword, which,
unless France were careful, would lead her to dictatorship. Behind all
else he showed the Church bent on reviving theocracy and intolerance.
And with respect to the Affair itself, after complaining that the
public mind had been poisoned against those who had resolved to
elucidate the truth, he pointed out that if Dreyfus had been condemned
on a document written by another (Esterhazy), whose guilt could be
proved thereby, a revision of his case would be an imperative, logical
necessity, for there could not be two persons condemned for the same
crime. Besides, Dreyfus had been legally condemned on the _bordereau_
alone--the only paper shown to his counsel--and even if there were
other papers which in defiance of the law had been kept secret, who
could refuse revision if it were proved that the _bordereau_, the one
known, acknowledged document, was from the hand of another man?
But the French War Office was determined that the authorship of the
_bordereau_ should not be brought home to Walsin-Esterhazy. General
Saussier, Military Governor of Paris, one of the few unprejudiced army
chiefs of that time, had ordered a prosecution, but the investigations
were carried out by the unscrupulous General de Pellieux, behind whom
was the even more unscrupulous Colonel Henry of the Intelligence
Bureau, and the acquittal of Esterhazy was virtually prearranged.
The charge against him--as preferred by M. Mathieu Dreyfus--was that
of having written the _bordereau_ for which Alfred Dreyfus had been
condemned, but at the court-martial of January 10 and 11, 1898, that
definite accusation was never considered. The proceedings were turned
against another officer, the gallant Colonel Picquart, who had been
the first to discover indications of Esterhazy's guilt. For the rest,
there was a deal of nonsense about a "veiled lady" and a "liberating
document"; and at last Walsin-Esterhazy was unanimously acquitted.
He was, one may remind the reader, an illegitimate descendant of a
famous Hungarian house, by reason of which connection he had assumed
the title of Count. Bold, clever, cunning, unscrupulous, a thorough
spendthrift, he had squandered his means and much of his wife's, also,
in the gambling hells of Paris. He had begun his military career as
a Papal Zouave. As a French soldier he was known to have been guilty
of malversation in Algeria and to have forged certificates of his own
exploits. He had written infamous letters about the French army to
a relative, Madame de Boulancy. He had repeatedly found himself in
desperate straits financially and had then borrowed money of Jews whom
he had never repaid. He had practically deserted his wife and lived
with a woman known as Mademoiselle Pays, who had been an _habituée_
of the notorious Parisian dancing saloon, the Moulin-Rouge. She was
certainly devoted to him, and he did not hesitate to eat her bread.
There is nowadays no doubt at all that he and none other perpetrated
the crimes for which Dreyfus had been sentenced. He had insulted and
jeered at France in his private letters, and he had sold such of
her military secrets as he could discover, not once nor twice, but
repeatedly, over a considerable period, to Colonel von Schwarzkoppen,
the German military _attaché_ in Paris, and perhaps to Colonel
Panizzardi, the Italian, and Colonel Schneider, the Austrian _attaché_,
also. His guilt with respect to the _bordereau_ was not perhaps
absolutely established at the time of his acquittal, but his frauds
and his general laxity of life were well known even then. Yet he was
acclaimed as the "martyr of the Jews," cheered by a delirious crowd of
officers and anti-Semites, embraced in public by young Prince Henri
d'Orléans as though he were the very embodiment of the national honour.
And on the morrow the gallant Colonel Picquart, who had striven to
prove his unworthiness, was arrested and imprisoned in the fortress of
Mont Valérien.
Zola now fully realised that the military authorities were resolved
on a denial of justice. They dreaded an exposure of their blunders,
their lies, and their illegal practices at the time of the conviction
of Dreyfus. No ordinary means could bring about a manifestation of
the truth. There remained "the sacred right of insurrection," which
was not to be exercised lightly, for only in a great extremity could
it be justifiably put to use. In Zola's opinion such an extremity had
arrived. The sole means of eliciting the truth lay in carrying the
Affair from the military tribunals to a civil court of justice, where
some equity might perhaps be found; but this was only to be achieved
by a virtually revolutionary method. Zola felt he must employ such a
method. He could not hesitate. The call of truth and justice was too
imperative. At once, therefore, directly he heard of the acquittal of
Esterhazy, telling nobody but his wife of his intention, Zola drew up
an open letter to M. Félix Faure, the President of the Republic. It
was speedily despatched to the printing firm which had already printed
the "Lettre à la Jeunesse" and the "Lettre à la France," the intention
being to publish it as a pamphlet. A proof was already corrected when
Zola thought of giving the letter a wider publicity by issuing it in a
newspaper. A Radical journal called "L'Aurore," established in 1896 by
M. Ernest Vaughan, previously one of the coadjutors of Henri Rochefort,
had already taken up the cause of Dreyfus in a very courageous manner.
Zola therefore offered his letter to M. Vaughan, who at once decided to
publish it; and though it was also printed as a pamphlet it was never
offered for sale in the latter form.[11] It appeared in "L'Aurore"
on the morning of January 13, 1898, with the following heading--what
French journalists call technically a _manchette_--in bold type:
"J'Accuse...!" The idea was M. Vaughan's, and though the proper title,
"A Letter to the President of the Republic from Émile Zola," was duly
given, it was as "J'Accuse" ("I Accuse") that the letter became known
all the world over.
It was a powerful piece of writing; those who only knew the Affair by
what appeared on the surface judged it at the time to be too violent,
excessive, but it was fully justified by subsequent events and
discoveries. After expressing solicitude for M. Félix Faure and his
presidency, on which so much mud had been cast by the Affair and its
abominations, and setting forth that a court-martial had just dared
to acquit, by order, an Esterhazy, a supreme blow to all truth and
justice, Zola declared that on his side he would dare to do something,
that is speak the truth, as he did not wish to be a tacit accomplice,
for in that case his nights would be haunted by the spectre of an
innocent man who was expiating beyond the seas, in frightful torture,
a crime he had not committed. Next came an interesting summary of
the Dreyfus case, a denunciation of the extraordinary methods and
machinations of Colonel du Paty de Clam, by whom Dreyfus had been
arrested, an account of the support which Du Paty had received from
Generals de Boisdeffre, Mercier, and Gonse, a scathing exposure of the
emptiness of the indictment on which Dreyfus had been convicted, and
a scornful rejection of a certain secret document about "a scoundrel
named D."[12] Passing to Esterhazy's case, Zola showed Picquart
unravelling the truth but thwarted in his endeavours by Generals
Billot, de Boisdeffre, and Gonse, because the condemnation of Esterhazy
would necessarily imply a revision of the proceedings against Dreyfus.
General Billot had not been compromised in them, he was a newcomer,
but had taken the crimes of others under his wing in order to save
what he deemed to be the interests of the military party. However,
M. Mathieu Dreyfus had denounced Esterhazy, who after being greatly
alarmed, ready for suicide or flight, had all at once become audacious,
having received help from "a veiled lady," otherwise Du Paty de Clam,
whose work, the conviction of Dreyfus, was now seriously imperilled,
and who therefore had to defend it. Then Zola referred to the struggle
between Colonels du Paty and Picquart, the latter of whom was at last
accused of forging a _petit bleu_, otherwise a card-telegram, in order
to ruin Esterhazy, in such wise that the one honest military man in
the whole Affair was made a victim. The proceedings at the Esterhazy
court-martial had been iniquitous, and yet in a sense only natural, for
as Zola wrote:
"How could one hope that one court-martial would undo
what another had done?... Does not the superior idea of
discipline, which is in the very blood of those soldiers,
suffice to weaken their capacity for equity? Whoever says
discipline says obedience. When the Minister of War,
the supreme chief, had publicly established, amid the
acclamations of the National Representatives [the Chamber
of Deputies] the authority of a decided case [_la chose
jugée_], could one expect that a court-martial would give
him the lie direct?... General Billot had given the judges
[of Esterhazy] a hint, and they gave their decision in the
same way as they might go into battle, that is, without
arguing. The preconceived opinion which they brought to the
bench was evidently this: 'Dreyfus was convicted of treason
by a court-martial; he is therefore guilty, and we, as a
court-martial, cannot declare him innocent; we know that to
proclaim the guilt of Esterhazy would be to proclaim the
innocence of Dreyfus.' Nothing could move them from this view.
"They have pronounced an iniquitous sentence which will
forever weigh on our courts-martial, and cast suspicion
on all their decisions. The first court-martial [that on
Dreyfus] may have been wanting in intelligence, the second
[on Esterhazy] was criminal, perforce. Its excuse, I repeat,
is that the supreme chief had spoken, declaring the _chose
jugée_ to be unassailable, holy, and superior to man, in such
wise that subordinates dared not affirm the contrary. People
speak of the honour of the army, they wish us to love and
respect it. Ah! certainly, yes, the army which would rise at
the first threat, which would defend our French soil, the
army which is compounded of the whole people, for that we
have only affection and respect. But it is no question of
that army, for the dignity of which we are justly anxious in
our desire for justice. It is a question of the sword, the
master that may be given us, perhaps, to-morrow. And to kiss
devoutly the hilt of the sword, the fetish--no!
"As I have shown, the Dreyfus Affair was the War Office
Affair. An officer of the Staff, denounced by his comrades
on the Staff, and condemned by the pressure of the Chiefs
of the Staff, cannot come back as an innocent man without
virtually showing the whole Staff to be guilty. And so the
War Office, by every imaginable means, by campaigns in
the press, by communications, by influence, has screened
Esterhazy in order to ruin Dreyfus a second time. Ah! what
a vigorous sweep the Republican Government ought to effect
in that Jesuits' den, as General Billot himself once styled
it! Where can we find a truly strong and wisely patriotic
Ministry daring enough to recast and renew it entirely? How
many are the people who, at the thought of war, tremble
with anguish, knowing in what hands the national defence is
placed! And what a den of base intrigue, tittle-tattle, and
waste has been made of that sacred asylum, where the fate of
the country is decided! We are scared by the terrible light
cast upon it by the Dreyfus Affair, that human sacrifice
of an unfortunate man, a 'dirty Jew!' Ah! what a seething
there has been there of madness and folly, silly fancies,
practices only fit for some base police service, customs
worthy of the inquisition and despotism, the good pleasure
of a few gold-braided individuals setting their heels on the
nation, and stifling its cry for truth and justice, under the
mendacious and sacrilegious pretext of the interest of the
State!"
Then, after censuring the press and the riff-raff of Paris, which
supported the evil-doers, Zola declared it was a crime to poison the
minds of the poor and lowly, to inflame reactionary passions and
intolerance, sheltered the while behind that odious anti-Semitism of
which France--the great France of the Rights of Man--would die if she
were not cured of it. "It is a crime," he added, "to exploit patriotism
for works of hatred, and finally it is a crime to make the sword one's
God, when all human science is working for the coming sway of truth and
justice." Next he praised M. Scheurer-Kestner, the great, good, upright
man who, in his honest simplicity, had believed that a statement of
the truth would suffice for justice to be done, and who was cruelly
punished for his delusion. In like way Colonel Picquart, in reward for
his scrupulousness and respectfulness, was covered with mud by his
superiors. "One even saw this ignoble thing," said Zola, referring to
Colonel Picquart, "a French tribunal, after allowing the prosecuting
counsel to heap charges on a witness, to accuse him publicly of every
kind of transgression, ordered the court to be cleared directly that
witness was called in to explain and defend himself. I declare that
this is one crime the more, a crime which will rouse the public
conscience. Decidedly, the military tribunals have a strange idea of
justice!"
Then after a final appeal to President Faure, who if he were the
prisoner of the Constitution and his _entourage_, still had to
discharge the duties of a man, Zola declared that he in no wise
despaired of triumph, for truth was on the march and nothing would
stop it. The Affair was only beginning. On one side were the guilty
who wished to withhold the light; on the other the servants of justice
who would lay down their lives in order that it might appear. When
truth was buried underground, it gathered strength there, acquired such
explosive force that on bursting forth it blew up everything. One would
see, then, if present secrecy had not prepared the most resounding of
disasters for some future date. And Zola concluded:
"I accuse Lieutenant-Colonel du Paty de Clam of having been
the diabolical author of the judicial error, unconsciously
I am willing to believe, and of having defended his baleful
work for three years by the most absurd and culpable
machinations. I accuse General Mercier of having rendered
himself an accomplice, at least through want of firmness,
in one of the greatest iniquities of the century. I accuse
General Billot of having held positive proofs of the
innocence of Dreyfus, and of having suppressed them, of
having perpetrated this crime against humanity and against
justice with a political object, and in order to save the
compromised Staff. I accuse General de Boisdeffre and General
Gonse of having become accomplices in the same crime, the
former doubtless from clerical passion,[13] the other,
perhaps, from that _esprit de corps_ which makes the War
Office a sacred and unassailable ark. I accuse General de
Pellieux and Major Ravary of having made a wicked inquiry,
that is an inquiry of the most monstrous partiality, of
which we have, in the latter's report, an imperishable
monument of naïve audacity. I accuse the three handwriting
experts,[14] Sieurs Belhomme, Varinard, and Couard, of
having made lying and fraudulent reports, unless medical
examination should prove that they suffer from diseased sight
and judgment. I accuse the War Office of having carried on in
the press, particularly in 'L'Éclair' and 'L'Echo de Paris,'
an abominable campaign in order to mislead public opinion
and screen its transgressions. Lastly I accuse the first
court-martial of having violated the law by condemning an
accused man on a document which was kept secret; and I accuse
the second court-martial of having covered that illegality by
order; in its turn committing the judicial crime of knowingly
acquitting a guilty person.
"In preferring these charges I am not ignorant of the fact
that I expose myself to the penalties of Clauses 30 and 31
of the Press Law of July 29, 1881, which punishes libel.
And it is voluntarily that I expose myself. As for the men
whom I accuse, I do not know them. I have never seen them.
I have no resentment or hatred against them. They are for
me mere entities, spirits of social maleficence. And the
act which I accomplish here is only a revolutionary means
of hastening the explosion of truth and justice. I have but
one passion--one for light, in the name of humanity, which
has suffered so much, and which has a right to happiness. My
passionate protest is but the cry of my soul. Let them have
the courage to bring me before an Assize Court, and let the
inquiry be held in broad daylight! I wait."
This manifesto threw Paris into a state of uproar. Three hundred
thousand copies of the number of "L'Aurore" containing it were
sold,[15] and long extracts were reproduced by "Le Siècle," "La Petite
République," and the few other newspapers which supported the cause
of Dreyfus: the great bulk of the press, it should be mentioned,
being on the other side. The Clericalists in particular now threw
off all disguise. That same afternoon Count Albert de Mun, the Papal
Nuncio's henchman, "interpellated" the government in the Chamber of
Deputies, and by 312 votes against 122 carried a resolution calling
on the authorities to put a stop to "the attacks on the honour of the
army." The Prime Minister, M. Méline, announced on this occasion that
it had been decided to prosecute Zola, but this hardly satisfied the
more ardent Clericalists, one of whom, M. de Pontbriand, deputy for
Nantes and an acolyte of the Archbishop of Paris, suggested a few
days afterwards that all the members of the Dreyfus family and the
leaders of the "Jew Syndicate"[16] should be cast into Mazas at once!
Moreover, a public meeting held at the Tivoli Hall was largely attended
by priests, Christian brothers, and seminarists of Saint Sulpice, who
were granted special leave for the occasion; and long and eager were
the shouts of "Down with the Jews!" raised by these ecclesiastics, who
were finally routed by some Anarchists among the audience.