It has been pretended that of recent years this secret service has been abolished; but such is by no means the case. It flourishes to-day in the same way as it flourished under the Second Empire, when Napoleon III. made a point of acquainting himself with the private correspondence of his own relatives, his ministers, and his generals. After the revolution of September 1870, hundreds of copies of more or less compromising letters, covert attacks on or criticisms of the Imperial Government, billets-doux also between Imperial princes and their mistresses, and so forth, were found at the Palace of the Tuilleries; and some of them were even published by a commission nominated by the Republican Government.

Much of the same kind of thing goes on to-day, and M. Zola, when in Paris during the earlier stages of the Dreyfus case, had made it a point to trust no letter of the slightest importance to the Postal Service. On one occasion, a short time after his arrival in England, we had reason to fear that a letter addressed by me to Paris had gone astray, and all correspondence on M. Zola's side was thereupon suspended for several days. However, the missing letter turned up at last, and from that time till the conclusion of the master's exile the arrangements devised between him, Wareham, and myself worked without a hitch.

VII

EXCURSIONS AND ALARUMS

Already at the time of M. Zola's arrival in London I had received a summons to serve upon the jury at the July Sessions of the Central Criminal court. I had been excused from service on a previous occasion, but this time I had no valid excuse to offer, and it followed that I must either serve or else pay such a fine as the Common Serjeant might direct. There is always a certain element of doubt in these matters; and while I might perhaps luckily escape service after a day or two, on the other hand, I might be kept at the Old Bailey for more than a week. At any other time I should have accepted my fate without a murmur; but I was greatly worried as to what might befall M. Zola during my absence in London, and I more than once thought of defaulting and 'paying up.' But the master would not hear of it. He was now located at Oatlands, and felt sure that he would have no trouble there. Moreover, said he, it would always be possible for me to run down now and again of an evening, dine with him, and attend to such little matters as might require my help.

So, on the Monday morning when the sessions opened, I duly repaired to town; and on the journey up, I saw in the 'Daily Chronicle' the announcement of M. Zola's recent presence at the Grosvenor Hotel. This gave me quite a shock. So the Press was on the right track at last! Starting from the Grosvenor Hotel, might not the reporters trace the master to Wimbledon, and thence to his present retreat? I had no time for hesitation. My instructions, moreover, were imperative. For the benefit of M. Zola personally, and for the benefit of the whole Dreyfus cause, I had orders to deny everything. So I drove to the Press Association offices, sent up a contradiction of the 'Daily Chronicle's' statement, and then hurried up Ludgate Hill to the Court, where my name was soon afterwards called.

I found myself on the second or third jury got together, and that day I was not empanelled. But on the morrow I was required to do duty; and between then and the latter part of the week I sat upon four or five cases—all crimes of violence, and one described in the indictment as murder. This position was the more unpleasant for me, as I am, by strong conviction, an adversary of capital punishment. I absolutely deny the right of society to put any man or any woman to death, whatever be his or her crime. My proper course then seemed to lie in the direction of a public statement, which would have created, I suppose, some little sensation or scandal; but happily the prosecuting counsel in his very first words abandoned the count of murder for that of manslaughter, and I was thereby relieved from my predicament.

The cases on which I sat, and those to which I listened while I remained in attendance, need not be particularised. I will merely mention that they were nearly all due to drink. Mr. Justice Lawrance, who sat upon the bench, was visibly impressed by the circumstance, to which he more than once alluded in his summings up. In one case he was so good as to refer to a question, put by me from the jury box, as a proper and pertinent one, at which I naturally felt vastly complimented. On the second or third day, either before the proceedings began or when the Court rose for luncheon—I do not exactly remember which—a gentleman approached me, and introduced himself as a member of the Press. Said he, 'I have been asking Mr. Avory for you. You are Mr. Vizetelly, I believe?'

'That is my name,' I answered.

'Well, I have come to speak to you about M. Zola's presence in England.'