“You have been told by previous witnesses of the style and punctuation of the bordereau. I wish to say something of the way in which the words are placed. M. Esterhazy begins his paragraphs without indention. The lines that begin paragraphs are as long as their predecessors. Furthermore, he never divides a word at the end of a line. If there is not room for it, he runs it over to the next line. Now, you find that in the bordereau. Another thing. The bordereau is not in the same handwriting throughout. Now, M. Esterhazy’s handwriting is very variable. He writes coarse or fine, according to circumstances. Now, these two handwritings of Major Esterhazy are to be seen in the bordereau. The first fourteen lines are written in a more compact, more calm, more legible, finer handwriting, the last sixteen in a larger, looser hand. Now, if the bordereau had been traced, what would have been the result? All the words would have been in the same handwriting, either one or the other; or else there would have been a mixture, one word in one handwriting and the next in the other. But in the bordereau all the first part is in one handwriting, and all the second part in the other, which clearly shows that M. Esterhazy wrote the bordereau at two sittings, in two different states of mind.
“Some words are repeated in the bordereau. The word ne, for instance, occurs four times; the word de seven times. It is very evident that, if these words had been hunted for in M. Esterhazy’s letters, in order to trace them, on finding the word ne they would have copied it four times. But such is not the case. If we had time, I would propose a little experiment. I would ask you to cut from the bordereau one of the four words ne, and give it to me; whereupon I would immediately tell you which one of the four it was. Or you might do the same thing with the word vous, which occurs six times. If you will cut it out and show it to me, I will tell you whether it is the fourth, the fifth, or the sixth. They are so different that, from memory, in spite of the inevitable confusion that takes possession of a man when he speaks in public and among strangers, I should be able to recognize them, which proves that each of these words was written individually by M. Esterhazy. No two persons ever write the same word exactly like, and no person ever writes a word twice in exactly the same way. And so in the bordereau there is this variety of form which life always gives.
“The last argument. As I said, M. Esterhazy never divides his words, but, if the end of the word is far from the end of the line, he makes a long final stroke, often immoderately long; and a curious thing, that I have never seen in the handwriting of anybody else, is this: if the word at the end of a line is a little word, and if M. Esterhazy has much room, he writes the word in a larger hand. You will find, for instance, at the end of a line an immoderately large ne, which seems almost in another handwriting. Now, that is precisely what you will find in M. Esterhazy’s letters, the elongation of the final strokes to fill out the blank space at the end of a line; which proves clearly that these words were not taken here and there from Esterhazy’s letters. I consider this demonstration irresistible, and, whether its truth be admitted or not today, the day will come when savants will take these documents and say that M. Esterhazy wrote the bordereau, and there will be no doubt about it whatever. There may have been an original corresponding as a whole to the bordereau, but in that case M. Esterhazy wrote the original. If it be insisted that somebody has imitated M. Esterhazy’s handwriting, the imitator was M. Esterhazy himself.”
At the end of this demonstration the court adjourned.
Tenth Day—February 17.
After a renewed demand on the part of the defence for the production of the original of the bordereau, and a refusal of the court to order its production, M. Paul Moriaud again took the stand to testify concerning the Uhlan letter. In this letter he pointed out various peculiarities tending to identify M. Esterhazy as the writer, especially the x form given to the letter n, giving the word “Uhlan” the appearance of “Uhlax,”—a peculiarity which had been pointed out in the bordereau a year previously by an expert to whom M. Esterhazy’s writing was unknown.
M. Moriaud was confronted with M. Varinard, who persisted that the Uhlan letter is a forgery, though saying that he could not give his reasons without having the original before him. The defence then asked for the production of the letter.
M. Clemenceau.—“Does not General de Pellieux think that it is of interest to the honor of the army to know whether a French officer wrote such a letter?”
General de Pellieux [advancing to the bar].—“Of the highest interest. On this point I agree with the defence, and there is not a single officer who does not share my sentiment. Major Esterhazy’s letters were written in 1882. I myself ask for their production.”
It was agreed that the letter should be produced the following day, and publicly examined by experts. Before the closing of the incident M. Clemenceau asked General de Pellieux whether any alterations to which the letter had been subjected must not have occurred while it was in Mme. de Boulancy’s possession.