“Silence, wretch!” answer some, while others shout: “Coward! Traitor! Judas!”
Under the insult the abject personage straightens up. He casts at us a glance of ferocious hatred.
“You have no right to insult me.”
A clear voice comes from the group, answering:
“You know well that you are not innocent.”
“Long live France! Dirty Jew!” they shout again, and Dreyfus goes on his way.
His garments have a pitiful look. In place of the stripes hang long bits of thread, and the cap has lost its shape. Dreyfus straightens up again, but he has now passed only half the line of troops, and it is evident that the continual shouts of the crowd and the various incidents of the parade are beginning to tell upon him. Though the head of the wretch is turned insolently toward the troops, whom he seems to defy, his legs are beginning to weaken, and his gait seems heavier. The group makes slow progress. Now it passes before the “Blues.” The tour of the square is finished. Dreyfus is handed over to the two gendarmes who picked up his stripes and the remnants of his sword. They put him in the prison vehicle. The coachman whips up his horses and the wagon starts off, surrounded by a detachment of republican guards, preceded by two with drawn revolvers. The parade has lasted just ten minutes.
After the parade Dreyfus was taken to the anthropometric department. The operation of measuring lasted another ten minutes. From beginning to end the condemned man was perfectly calm, and maintained an absolute silence. Then several photographs were taken, after which he was returned to his cell, where he again protested his innocence.
“Such, gentlemen, was the attitude of Dreyfus. You are to judge of it for yourselves. It is tragic to reread such a recital after an interval of three years, and under the present dramatic circumstances, but it was necessary for you to hear it. And after the degradation? After and before, rather? Let me read you the letters that he wrote to the minister of war and to his counsel.
Monsieur le Ministre: