“I do not feel like running away now,” said Merry grimly.
“You know the old saying,” muttered Jack: “‘He who fights and runs away,’ etc.”
“I know, but there is no reason why I should run. I can do the anti-Dreyfus men no harm now.”
“Perhaps they do not know that. Your sympathy is with Dreyfus?”
“Yes. I believe he was unjustly condemned. I believe everything points to Esterhazy as the guilty man.”
“But the bordereau, the paper which convicted him——”
“Was forged by Esterhazy, I firmly believe. Of late, everything has tended to prove that. There was no real reason why Dreyfus should have acted as a traitor. It could not have been from anger or disappointment, as he had the finest prospects of an excellent military career.”
“And Esterhazy——”
“Always an adventurer and a soldier of fortune, always begging money from the money-lenders, always extravagant and dissolute, there were many reasons why he might have been guilty. Letters of his, which he cannot deny, and in which he abused France unmercifully, have been found. Those letters are in the possession of the friends of Dreyfus, and will be used at the proper time.”
“But it has been claimed that Dreyfus was dissolute, that he was a gambler, and an associate of the low and vicious.”