Major Lauth.—“On the addressed side.”
M. Clemenceau.—“Then will Major Lauth explain to us, accepting the improbable supposition that he had complied with Colonel Picquart’s desire, where he would have had the post-office stamp placed?”
Major Lauth.—“In the first place, he did not ask me to have the paper stamped. He said to me: ‘Do you think that they would stamp it?’ It is not for me to inquire what his purpose was.”
M. Clemenceau.—“I wanted to know how M. Lauth could explain the alleged fact that Colonel Picquart asked to have a post-office stamp placed upon this document by any third party whomsoever, to give it authenticity, when, according to M. Lauth’s testimony, there was no place on it where a stamp could be put without putting it in part on the strips of gummed paper?”
Major Lauth.—“I have no explanation to give.”
M. Clemenceau.—“If the dispatch comes from the cornucopia, it is torn and not stamped. If it comes from the post-office, it is stamped and not torn. When the chief of staff shall call for the original, if it is shown to him torn and stamped, because coming from the post, he will ask: ‘Why is it torn?’ Another hypothesis: Assuming the dispatch to be torn and stamped, it can have but one origin. It must come from Major Esterhazy’s premises, because, stamped, it had been in the mails, and, torn, Major Esterhazy must have torn it. Now, Major Lauth has just said that it has never been pretended that the dispatch came from Major Esterhazy’s premises.”
M. Labori.—“When you compared Major Esterhazy’s handwriting with the bordereau, was the original of the bordereau before you, or the photographs only?”
Colonel Picquart.—“Photographs only. The original of the bordereau was in the Dreyfus file, sealed. That file has been unsealed only twice, when General Gonse had occasion to withdraw some papers from it.”
The Judge.—“Did the photographs conform absolutely to the original?”
Colonel Picquart.—“They were used for the experts.”