THE DREYFUS CASE :/.31
on the third day, when she was pronounced out of danger, her
first words were a string of stammered witticisms to reassure the
anxious Marcel. But the operation had been a success, and by the
~nd of the year Mme Proust seemed completely recovered. She
remained for two months in the nursing-home and in October
went to Trouville with Dr Proust for convalescence.
Proust himself seems to have made, in the same month, a trip
to Holland which is recalled in Jean Santeuil's visit to the seashore
at Scheveningen, perhaps also in the mysterious and-so long as
we do not know its key-absurd incident of the Dutch nun.l
Meanwhile, on 21 August at St Petersburg, his childhood sweet-
heart Marie de Benardaky had married Prince Michel Radziwill,
a distant cousin of the Prince Leon Radziwill whom he was to
know a few years later. It is probably that, just as Jean Santeuil
meets Marie Kossichef in society ("I believe we used to play
together in the Champs-Elysees," she says to the now indifferent
Jean),2 so Proust had seen Mile de Benardaky after her 'coming-
out'. The grown-up Marie, as her photograph shows, was dark
and pretty; she had the rosy cheeks, and features at once frank
and foxy, of Gilberte Swann. The new Princesse Radziwill was
to have a daughter, Leontine, born in 1904; but her marriage was
not happy, and was dissolved in 1915.
In August 1898 occurred the most astonishing event of the
whole Dreyfus Affair. The ArnIy had always assured the Govern-
ment that it had the really crushing evidence against Dreyfus in
reserve; and the new anti-revisionist war-minister, Cavaignac,
decided to produce it. He was furnished with three documents, the
'canaille de D--' letter, which in fact did not refer to Dreyfus
at all, a letter of 1896 which would have been completely irrele-
vant if the ingenious Colonel Henry had not altered the date to1894 and the initial P--to D--, and thefoux Henry itself.
. He revealed these to the Chamber on 7 July. Pic quart immediately
denounced all three as forgeries and was duly rearrested on 12.
July; the faux Henry was carefully inspected for the first time and
found to be completely bogus; Henry was taken into custody on
30 August, and cut his throat from ear to ear in Mont-Valerien
prison next day. Cavaignac and Boisdeffre, whose only fault had
1 Jean Santeuil, Part VI, ch. VIII, and Part X, ch. IV
- Jean Same"il, Part VIII, ch. I; cf. A la Recherche, III, 574, where the
Narrator fails to recognise Gilberte at the Duchesse de Guennantes's.