MARCEL PROUSTnot imposing the death-sentence. Even Major Picquart, the future
champion of Dreyfus, disliked Jews; he was present at the court-
martial and had been unfavourably impressed by the toneless
voice in which Dreyfus had protested his innocence. The various
army officers involved in the condemnation, including Major
Henry, were perfectly sincere in their belief in his guilt. Rather
than let a traitor escape, they felt justified in exaggerating the
evidence against him; for its thinness, they thought, only showed
the cleverness of the criminal. Their chief error had been failure
to realise that the secret documents could have been procured by
a person not entitled to possess them. In fact, they had been
sold, and the hordereau written, by Major Esterhazy, an aggrieved
and insolvent infantry officer who had never belonged either to
the artillery or to the general staff. It was an unfortunate co-
incidence that his handwriting had a superficial resemblance to
Dreyfus's.
In July 1895 Major Georges Picquart was placed in charge of
the so-called Statistical Section and ordered to re-examine the
case against Dreyfus with a view to discovering a motive for the
crime. Nothing turned up until March 1896, when the invaluable
Mme Bastian brought from Schwartzkoppen's waste-paper basket
the torn fragments of a petit hteu, or special delivery letter. It was
addressed to Esterhazy. At first Picquart only suspected a new
traitor; but in August he obtained specimens of Esterhazy's hand-
writing and immediately recognised its identity with that of the
bordereau. His superiors were willing to admit that Esterhazy
might be guilty, but not that Dreyfus was innocent. In December
Picquart was transferred to Tunisia, and knew his career was
broken: "I shan't carry this secret with me to my grave," were
his parting words. Meanwhile, from September 1896 onwards,
Henry began forging new evidence against Dreyfus, some of
which was designed to implicate Pic quart as an accomplice. He
believed he was acting for the best, that Picquart was a blundering
meddler or worse, that Dreyfus was guilty; and he knew that his
own reputation, not to mention that of his superiors and the
whole army, was at stake. Picquart remained silent from a sense
of military duty, though he left a confidential account of his
discoveries with his lawyer, Leblois, 'in case anything should
happen to me'. For yet another year the Dreyfus Case seemed
stilled, as if for ever.