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say, ‘From now on, I’d like to be copied in to all their correspondence as soon as it arrives at the Colonial Ministry.’
    ‘Yes, Colonel.’
    ‘In the meantime, Monsieur Guénée, you should continue the surveillance of the family. As long as their agitation is confined to the level of clairvoyance, there is nothing to concern us. However, if it starts to go beyond that, we may have to think again. And at all times be on the lookout for something that might suggest an additional motive for Dreyfus’s treason.’
    ‘Yes, Colonel.’
    And with that, the briefing ends.
    At the end of the afternoon, I put the file of correspondence into my briefcase and take it home.
    It is a still, warm, golden time of day. My apartment is high enough above the street to muffle most of the city’s noise; the rest is deadened by the book-lined walls. The floor space is dominated by a grand piano – an Erard – miraculously salvaged from the rubble of Strasbourg and given to me by my mother. I sit in my armchair and tug off my boots. Then I light a cigarette and gaze across at the briefcase sitting on the piano stool. I am supposed to change and go straight out again. I should leave it until I return. But my curiosity is too strong.
    I sit at the tiny escritoire between the two windows and take out the file. The first item is a letter sent from the military prison of Cherche-Midi dated 5 December 1894, more than seven weeks after Dreyfus’s arrest. It has been neatly copied out by the censor on lined paper:
My dear Lucie,
At last I am able to write you a word. I have just been informed that my trial takes place on the 19th of this month. I am not allowed to see you.
I will not describe to you all that I have suffered; there are no terms in the world strong enough in which to do so.
Do you remember when I used to say to you how happy we were? All life smiled upon us. Then suddenly came a terrible thunderclap, from which my brain is still reeling. I, accused of the most monstrous crime that a soldier could commit! Even now I think I am the victim of a terrible nightmare . . .
    I turn the page and scan the lines rapidly to the end: I embrace you a thousand times, for I love you, I adore you. A thousand kisses to the children. I dare not speak more to you of them. Alfred .
    The next letter, again a copy, is written from his cell a fortnight later, the day after his conviction: My bitterness is so great, my heart so envenomed, that I should already have rid myself of this sad life if the thought of you had not stayed me, if the fear of increasing your grief still more had not withheld my hand .
    And then a copy of the reply from Lucie on Christmas Day: Live for me, I entreat you my dear friend; gather up your strength, and strive – we will strive together until the guilty man is found. What will become of me without you? I shall have nothing to link me with the world . . .
    I feel grubby reading all this. It is like hearing a couple making love in the next-door room. But at the same time I cannot stop myself reading on. I leaf through the file until I come to Dreyfus’s description of the degradation ceremony. When he writes of the glances of scorn cast upon me by his former comrades, I wonder if he has me in mind: It is easy to understand their feelings; in their place, I could not have restrained my contempt for an officer who, I was assured, was a traitor. But alas! that is the pity of it; there is a traitor, but I am not the man . . .
    I stop and light another cigarette. Do I believe these protestations of innocence? Not for an instant. I have never met a scoundrel in my life who hasn’t insisted, with exactly this degree of sincerity, that he is the victim of a miscarriage of justice. It seems to be a necessary part of the criminal mentality: to survive captivity, one must somehow convince oneself one is not guilty. Madame Dreyfus, on the other hand, I do feel sorry for. It is obvious she trusts in him entirely – no,