September 7 I had the honor to direct your attention to the scandal that certain people were threatening to precipitate, and I permitted myself to say to you that, in my opinion, if we do not take the initiative, we shall have much trouble on our hands. The article from “L’Eclair” which you will find enclosed confirms me unhappily in my opinion. I shall try to find out who has succeeded so well in preparing the bomb. But I believe it my duty to affirm once more that it is necessary to act without delay. If we wait longer, we shall be run over, and imprisoned in an inextricable situation, where it will be impossible for us to establish the real truth. Be good enough, etc.,
Picquart.
M. Scheurer-Kestner, after repeating the substance of the foregoing letters, continued his testimony as follows:
“Such, gentlemen, is the résumé that I have been able to make from memory of these fine letters, which honor their author, both as a soldier and as a man. After reading them, I was convinced that there had been an error. I saw that General Gonse, Colonel Picquart’s superior, shared his ideas, and looked upon revision as a possibility. What had I to do? My first duty was to inform the minister of war, and show him the documents which proved that the handwriting of the bordereau was the handwriting of Major Esterhazy, and not that of Captain Dreyfus. That was what I did. I had a long conversation with General Billot, and showed him the documents that I possessed, though I did not speak at that time of the correspondence between General Gonse and Colonel Picquart, thinking it better not to do so. But I was not slow in offering this correspondence to the government, and naturally I was authorized to keep a copy of it. Unhappily new events had taken place, and the government perhaps had changed its attitude; I do not know; in any case, my offer was refused. It seemed to me that the honor of the government, of the republic, of democracy, and of the army required that the initiative in such a reparation should come from above, and not from below.
“Then what happened? The day after my visit to the minister of war, in which I spoke to him of the documents and showed them to him (that was October 31),—on the day after, November 1, though it had been agreed between us that our conversation should be secret, that it should not be noised abroad, that there should be no mention of it, what did I see in the newspapers inspired, so I was told, by the minister of war,—my visit to the minister related with false comments. It was said that I had shown nothing, that I had refused to give the minister of war proof of the innocence of Dreyfus, when, in fact, I had been with him three hours, begging him to make the proof public, and offering to cry it from the house-tops. He either would not, or could not, do it. He confined himself to saying: ‘He is guilty.’ ‘Prove to me that he is guilty,’ I said. ‘I cannot prove it to you.’ That was General Billot’s answer when I had brought important documents, and when my heart was full of all that I knew through the reading of the letters of which I had just spoken. That is how I came to my present conviction, and that is the way in which I gained courage to take up a cause which is a cause of humanity, truth, and justice.”
M. Labori.—“M. Scheurer-Kestner has told us of his conversation with General Billot. Will he now be good enough to tell us if he has interviewed the prime minister?”
M. Scheurer-Kestner.—“I had several interviews with the prime minister in the early days of November. To him I told all that I knew, all that I had learned. I offered to him the letters that passed between General Gonse and Colonel Picquart, for to him I could speak of what had happened at the bureau of information.”
M. Labori.—“Whence and under what circumstances came M. Mathieu Dreyfus’s denunciation of Major Esterhazy? Did not M. Mathieu Dreyfus have a conversation with you in which he revealed to you the name of Major Esterhazy,—a name which had come to his knowledge by a path wholly different from that by which it had come to your ears?”
M. Scheurer-Kestner.—“I had not uttered the name of Major Esterhazy in the presence of a single private individual. I had mentioned it only to the government when, on November 12, I received a message from M. Mathieu Dreyfus, asking me to receive him at my house. I had no relations with him; he had never been at my house; I had never seen him; I was not acquainted with him. He came, and this is the story that he told. A certain M. de Castro, whom he did not know, was walking on the boulevards, at the time when they were selling the placards which contained the proof of treason,—placards which bore portraits on both sides, and in the middle a fac-simile of the bordereau. M. de Castro, who is a foreigner, and who theretofore had not been much interested in this matter, bought one of these placards simply to pass away the time, and, as soon as he had it in his hands,—I make use of a word which he used himself when he told me the story later,—he was dazed. ‘I went home,’ he said, ‘took out the package of letters from Esterhazy that I had in my desk,—thirty or forty of them,—and made sure that I was not mistaken. The bordereau was really in his writing.’ M. de Castro hurried to the house of M. Mathieu Dreyfus, and it was after this visit that M. Mathieu Dreyfus came to me in the evening to say this: ‘You must know the author of the bordereau. It is said that you have been occupying yourself with this matter for a long time, with an earnestness really feverish, and that you are searching for information everywhere. Then you must know whom they have substituted, or tried to substitute, for M. Alfred Dreyfus as the author of the bordereau, since I know that you are convinced, from the examination of handwritings, that Alfred Dreyfus is not the author of it.’ And, as I refused to give him the name, he said: ‘Well, if I speak the name, and if the name that I speak has come under your eyes in your investigations, will you tell me so?’ I answered: ‘In that case I shall consider myself unbound, and will say yes.’ Then M. Mathieu Dreyfus spoke the name of Major Esterhazy, and I said to him: ‘Under the circumstances in which you find yourself, it is your duty to state this immediately to the minister of war.’ For at that moment, thanks to the newspapers, a certain number of superior officers were under suspicion, and I was very glad that, under the circumstances in which this fact appeared, these superior officers would be placed out of the question. Thus it was that M. Mathieu Dreyfus pointed out Major Esterhazy to the minister of war as the author of the bordereau.”
M. Zola.—“I beg M. Scheurer-Kestner to give us further details regarding his interview with General Billot, in order to emphasize a thing which I consider of great importance. You know, Monsieur le Président, that they accuse us, and that they accuse me personally, of having been the cause of the frightful crisis that is now dividing the country. They say that we have produced this great trouble which is disturbing business and inflaming hearts. Well, I should like it to be clearly established that General Billot was warned by M. Scheurer-Kestner of what would take place. I would like M. Scheurer-Kestner to say that he is an old friend of General Billot, that he addresses him with the utmost familiarity, that he almost wept in his arms, and that he begged him, in the name of France, to take the matter up. I would like him to say that.”