“I believe, gentlemen, that there will remain no illusion as to my patriotism, and I must say that it is in our ranks, in the ranks of those who think as I do, that are to be found the most enlightened patriots, who see most clearly the interests of the country. Those who insult the army are the rotten journalists who accuse the minister of war of having sold himself for 30,000 francs to a pretended Jewish syndicate. The insulters of the army are those heroes of fear who told you at the beginning of this case: Rather let the innocent suffer torture than compromise our security, when a foreign power is watching us! What! a foreign power is watching us, and we have an army of two millions of men, an entire nation to defend the country, with 2,000 educated officers, workers, ready to shed their blood on the battle-field, who, in time of peace are preparing perfect weapons, and you think that we would insult them? The insulters are those who run through the streets crying ‘Long live the army!’ without crying ‘Long live the republic!’—those two cries that cannot be separated. The insulters are those who cry ‘Long live the army!’ and then ‘Death to Zola!’ and ‘Down with the Jews!’ For who is there that has not in the army a brother, a son, a parent, a friend? The army is the flesh of our flesh, blood of our blood. Ask rather this noble defendant, this courageous citizen who sits here on a bench of infamy, which he will transform into a bench of glory,—ask him if he does not share my sentiment.”
M. Zola.—“Absolutely.”
M. Grimaux.—“Gentlemen, I believe that I have said all that I desired to say in order to wash from my honor imputations that ought not to remain in an official document; but I venture to add that my conviction grows more and more certain. I declare it again. Neither insults or threats or revocation can touch me, for truth wears an impenetrable cuirass. We have entered on a path which we shall follow to the end. We desire the truth, and we will have it. We will pursue this path from which nothing shall turn us, for we are of those who want the light, complete light. Our consciences are thirsty for justice.”
As M. Grimaux left the witness-stand, M. Zola arose and shook hands with him, and M. Grimaux said something to him in a low voice.
M. Labori.—“Be good enough, M. Grimaux, to say aloud what you have just said to M. Zola.”
M. Grimaux.—“I said that I had never seen M. Zola before; I now see him for the first time.”
The last witness of the day was M. Louis Havet, professor in the College of France, and member of the Institute.
Testimony of M. Louis Havet.
The witness first dealt with the similarities in handwriting between the bordereau and the Esterhazy letters, and contrasted them with the letters of Dreyfus, pointing out especially that in the bordereau and the Esterhazy letters the capital J’s are written half above and half below the line, while the J’s of Dreyfus always stop at the line. Passing then from handwriting to orthography, M. Havet testified as follows:
“Both Captain Dreyfus and Major Esterhazy spell well. They make no mistakes regarding the s in the plural, or in other matters of that sort. But let us examine some orthographic minutiæ,—the accents and the cedilla. Captain Dreyfus is not much of a grammarian; he has not the soul of a grammarian, and he often forgets to put a cedilla where one is needed, writing, for instance, français or façon without a cedilla, or perhaps he will put a cedilla where there should be none,—for instance, forçe and souffrançe with a cedilla. In this he is capricious. He writes the word annonçant now with and now without the cedilla. And the same as to the accents. If he writes the preposition à, which should have a grave accent, he sometimes gives it a grave accent and sometimes does not. He also uses needless accents. The word nécessaire, which has an acute accent over the first vowel, is written by him with an accent over each e. With Esterhazy it is quite the contrary. He is very careful about his accents, and his hyphens, and all the little details of orthography. He puts a grave accent over the preposition à not only when it is a small letter in the middle of a phrase, but when it is a capital letter at the beginning of a sentence. Now, the bordereau and Major Esterhazy’s letters show absolutely the same orthographical habits, while the bordereau differs totally in this respect from the letters of Captain Dreyfus.