Fac-simile card from Zola to Vizetelly
He had entrusted his defence to an advocate still young in years, esteemed by all who knew him, but not as yet of high public reputation. Born at Rheims, of Alsatian parents, his father being one of the chief inspectors of the East of France Railway Company, Maître Labori had married a lady of Irish extraction, at one time well known in London musical circles. He was possessed of a tall, commanding figure, a bright, sunny face, a warm, penetrating voice. And he was not only very talented and extremely courageous, but he had the best of qualifications for the task he undertook: he believed absolutely in the innocence of Dreyfus; and thus he threw himself into the struggle with a whole-hearted devotion. The reader who knows something of the great fight he made both for Zola and for the unhappy Jewish officer, may be surprised to learn that if Maître Labori made himself a great name during that struggle, he reaped little or no immediate pecuniary gain. Zola's being a genuine political case, he would take no fee; he was only willing to accept a comparatively modest sum for his expenses and the services of the young advocates, his secretaries. In this he was following one of the lofty traditions on which the French bar prides itself. Berryer asked no fee when he defended either the ministers of Charles X or Louis Napoléon before the peers of Louis Philippe's time; Jules Favre asked none, whether he defended Orsini or other conspirators, or one of the many journalists or politicians arraigned during the Second Empire. The same may be said of Joly, who defended Henri Rochefort; of Gambetta when he defended Delescluze, and of many others. Occasionally a present in kind may be accepted by counsel; and from a few words that Zola once let fall, the writer thinks that Maître Labori may have been eventually persuaded to accept the title-deed of a little property which several of those indebted for his services thought of purchasing and presenting to him.
At the suit of Zola and his fellow-defendant nearly a hundred witnesses—ministers, officers, deputies, senators, diplomatists, authors, journalists, handwriting experts, and others—were summoned to appear at the approaching trial; but great efforts were made to prevent many from attending. Directly the jury-roll was issued, the names and addresses of those who might have to pronounce on the case were published by "Le Petit Journal" and other scurrilous prints; and numerous threatening letters were sent to these men, intimating that vengeance would follow if they should dare to acquit "the Italian." Moreover the Nationalist and Clerical leaders prepared for demonstrations on a large scale. A kind of employment office was established on the boulevards, where hirelings were engaged at the rate of five francs a day or two francs an evening to shout "Vive l'armée," "À bas les Juifs," and "Conspuez Zola!" These men met with little or no interference from the authorities, who contented themselves with massing police and municipal guards in and around the Palais de Justice.
The trial began on February 7. The Assize Court was crowded, Nationalists and anti-Semites preponderating among the audience. There were fifteen sittings altogether, the last being held on February 23. The presiding judge, M. Delegorgue,[19] did his utmost to prevent the witnesses from giving evidence respecting the Dreyfus case; and again and again, when Maître Labori wished to ask a question, Delegorgue snappishly exclaimed: "The question shall not be put!" Nevertheless the judge could not prevent the witnesses and Labori from establishing a number of facts—among others the illegality of Dreyfus's condemnation, the insignificance of the evidence upon which he had been officially condemned, the error committed by the military judges in respect of the bordereau, and the certainty that it was Esterhazy's work. The evidence was, indeed, of such immense significance that the General Staff thought it necessary to strike a decisive blow. General de Pellieux gave the jury a summary of a forged correspondence between Colonels von Schwarzkoppen and Panizzardi, the former German and Italian military attachés, this correspondence, in which Dreyfus was mentioned, having been manufactured by a certain Lemercier-Picard with the knowledge of the notorious Colonel Henry. General de Boisdeffre, however, virtually certified its authenticity, and at the same time threatened the jury with the resignation of the whole General Staff if Zola were acquitted. Then Colonel Henry and Major Lauth accused Picquart of having asserted Dreyfus's innocence without knowledge of the papers in the case, and of having invented one of them in order to ruin Esterhazy. Maître Labori was not allowed to question the generals, or answer them. Great indignation was expressed when Picquart had the courage to say that a Panizzardi-Schwarzkoppen letter mentioned by General de Pellieux was a forgery. Yet not only was such the case, but some weeks previously the forgery had been revealed to the embassies of Italy and Germany, most probably by Lemercier-Picard, the forger himself. Count Tornielli and Count Münster in their turn had revealed it to M. Hanotaux, the French Foreign Minister, demanding his word of honour that no use should be made of it. M. Hanotaux communicated this revelation to his colleagues, and even sent a written note about it to the Ministry of War. It has been said, too, that on the day after General de Pellieux's deposition M. Hanotaux proposed to suspend the proceedings in Zola's trial in order to look for and prosecute the forgers, but that his fellow-ministers hesitated from fear of a military movement. Anyhow, the episode ended disastrously for Lemercier-Picard. On March 3 he was found hanging in his room, his feet dangling on the floor. All his papers had disappeared before the police came to take possession of the corpse. Yet, according to the authorities, it was a case of suicide![20] The trial was full of stirring episodes. The Nationalists who crowded the court vented their passions freely, shouting, jeering, and groaning at almost everybody who expressed any view favourable to Dreyfus or derogatory to the swaggering, gold-laced officers, who when questioned either refused to answer or perjured themselves with the audacity of men confident of impunity. Zola, who was insulted day after day, put a brave face on it all, and only on a few occasions did he give utterance to his disgust, protesting against the manner in which he was mobbed in the streets, and against the denial of justice which he encountered in court, where he claimed the same liberty to defend himself as was accorded to thieves and assassins. At one sitting, when General de Pellieux made a slighting remark, the novelist turned on him haughtily: "There are several ways of serving France," said he. "A man may do so with the sword or with the pen. If you have won victories, so have I. I bequeath the name of Émile Zola to posterity, which will choose between us!" De Pellieux made no retort to those proud words. In that hour of mendacious triumph he did not foresee the day when he would be virtually disgraced, consigned to an obscure garrison in Brittany, to die there, tortured, as we know, by the deepest remorse. Again, at one moment towards the close of the trial, when the storm of execration thundered more loudly than usual in Zola's ears, the novelist turned towards the bellowers, and with one word branded them: "You cannibals!" he cried, "you cannibals!"
Except on two or three occasions when the rain fell in torrents, great precautions had to be taken for Zola's safety. Senator Ranc, an old conspirator and no mean judge of danger, subsequently stated that to his knowledge the novelist repeatedly had some very narrow escapes. The carriage in which he drove to and from the Palais de Justice was often pursued by a hostile mob, which the police had to charge and disperse. On some occasions policemen mounted on bicycles escorted the carriage, and Zola was always accompanied by a little body-guard of friends: M. Fasquelle, his publisher, M. Bruneau, the composer, and particularly M. Fernand Desmoulin, the accomplished engraver, to whom one owes a fine portrait of Zola, produced at the time when the Rougon-Macquart series was completed. Throughout the tumultuous period of the trial M. Desmoulin was invariably by his friend's side with a six-shooter in readiness. Madame Zola, who also attended the proceedings, was in like way escorted by vigilant friends. The horror of it all had at first seemed more than she could bear, but she strove to be brave and calm. After all, as she repeated, her husband was doing his duty.
On the thirteenth day of the trial, after the speech for the prosecution, Zola read an address to the jury, in which, after referring to all the pressure employed to secure his conviction, he sketched broadly and graphically the situation into which the Affair had cast France. He denied that he had insulted the army: those who had done so were the men who mingled with their acclamations the cry of "Down with the Jews!" "And they have even shouted, 'Vive Esterhazy!'" he added. "Great God! the nation of Saint Louis, of Bayard, of Condé, and of Hoche; the nation that can boast a hundred gigantic victories; the nation of the great wars of Republican and Imperial days; the nation whose strength, grace, and generosity have dazzled the world, has shouted 'Long live Esterhazy!' That is a stain of which only our effort for truth and justice can wash us clean." Then after speaking sarcastically of the alleged "Jewish Syndicate," said to have been formed to bribe people and buy evidence, he appealed to the common sense of the jury, warning them they would make a great mistake if they imagined that the campaign would be stopped by any verdict of guilty in his case. As for himself, he shrugged his shoulders at the insinuations that he had sold himself to the Jews, that he was a liar and a traitor. Then he continued:
"I have no political, no sectarian passions. I am a writer. I have toiled all my life, and shall return to the ranks to-morrow to resume my interrupted work. How stupid it is of some to call me an Italian, I the son of a French mother, brought up by Beauceron grandparents.... I lost my father when I was seven years old and did not visit Italy till I was fifty-four.... Still that does not prevent me from feeling very proud that my father belonged to Venice, the resplendent city whose ancient glory rings through every mind. But, even if I were not French, would not the forty volumes in the French language which I have scattered by millions of copies throughout the world, would not they suffice to make me a Frenchman, one useful to the glory of France?"
Having thus dealt with the personal question, Zola proceeded to plead for Dreyfus, for equity and enlightenment which alone could restore peace and order in France. And, asking the jurymen if they wished to see France isolated in Europe, he showed them the foreign nations already casting doubts on French humanity and equity. Next, amid increasing interruptions, he continued as follows:
"Alas! gentlemen, like so many others, you await perhaps a flash of lightning, the proof of the innocence of Dreyfus descending from heaven like a thunderbolt. Truth does not come upon us in that way; as a rule, some research and intelligence are needed to find her. (Jeers.) The proof! Ah! we well know where it might be found. But it is only in the depths of our souls that we think of that, and our patriotic anguish proceeds from a dread lest France should have exposed herself to receiving that proof as a slap, after compromising the honour of her army by a lie. (Loud protests.) But I wish to declare plainly that if we notified to the prosecution the names of certain members of foreign embassies as witnesses, we had no intention of summoning those persons to this court. Some people smiled at our audacity. But I do not think that anybody smiled at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for there they must have understood our object. (Protests.) We merely wished to indicate to those who know the whole truth that we knew it also. It is circulating in all the embassies, it will soon be known to everybody.... The Government which is ignorant of nothing, the Government which, like ourselves, is convinced of the innocence of Dreyfus (Loud protests.) can, without any risk, and whenever it pleases, find witnesses who will at last throw light on everything.
"Dreyfus is innocent, I swear it. (The proof! The proof!) I stake my life on it, I stake my honour on it. At this solemn hour, in presence of this tribunal which represents human justice, before you, gentlemen of the jury, who personify the nation, before all France, before the whole world, I swear that Dreyfus is innocent. (Uproar.) And by my forty years of labour, by the authority which that labour may have given me, I swear that Dreyfus is innocent. (Violent protests.) And by all I have acquired, by the name I have made for myself, by my works which have contributed to the expansion of French literature, I swear that Dreyfus is innocent. (Protests and hisses.) May all that crumble, may my works perish, if Dreyfus is not innocent. He is innocent! (Prolonged uproar.)
"Everything seems to be against me, the two Chambers, the civil authorities, the military authorities, the newspapers which circulate the most widely, and public opinion which they have poisoned. And on my side I have only an ideal of truth and justice. And I am quite easy in mind, for I shall conquer. I did not wish my country to remain amid mendacity and injustice. You may strike me here. France will some day thank me for having helped to save her honour." (General tumult. Repeated shouts of "The proof! Give the proof!")