The prisoner is then obliged to pass before the line of soldiers. As he approaches the railing the civilian crowd gets a better view of him and yells, “Death to him!”
When he arrives before a group of reporters he pauses and says, “Tell the people of France that I am innocent.”
They mock him, however, crying, “Dastard! Traitor! Judas! Vile Jew!”
He passes on and comes to a group of officers of the General Staff, his late colleagues. Here again he pauses, and says, “Gentlemen, you know I am innocent.”
But they yell at him as did the reporters. He surveys them closely through his pincenez and says calmly, “You’re a set of cowards.” There is utter contempt in his voice. At length the direful march is ended. Dreyfus enters a van and is driven to the Prison de la Santé.
For nearly four years the world was a blank to him. Of the efforts made to rehabilitate him he knew nothing. He knew not that the real traitor had been discovered. He knew nothing of the heroic Picquart’s unselfish martyrdom in the cause of truth and justice. He knew nothing of Zola’s melodramatic entrance upon the scene. He knew nothing of the crimes that were committed in the name of l’honneur de l’armée. Was it to be wondered at that he should have been overwhelmed when these things were told him at Rennes?
The story of the indignities that he endured, the tortures that he suffered at the Ile du Diable, has been given to the world by his counsels, Maîtres Labori and Demange. It is like a chapter from the dark ages. Once, when it was reported that an attempt would be made to rescue him, this man, consumed with fever and almost bereft of reason, was, by the order of M. Lebon, Minister of the Colonies, chained to his couch, while the lamp that was kept burning over his head attracted hordes of tropical insects. He was told that his wife sought to forget him and desired to marry again. In his despair his jailers thought he might say something that would incriminate him. They were mistaken. He made no confession. There was none to make. He could only yell in their ears, “I am innocent! I am innocent!” When, in early autumn of 1898, he was believed to be dying this message was cabled from Paris to Cayenne: “Embalm him if he dies, and send us his corpse.”
But he lived. And he may still live to see in his appalling experience the cause of social revolution in France—a revolution that shall make the rights of the individual paramount to the traditions of the army, to the subtle cravings of the clericals, to the fantastic schemers of the Faubourg St. Germain.