2)2 MARCEL PROUST
been belief in what they wished to believe, furiously resigned on
the spot. Esterhazy, seeing the game was up, fled the country.·
At last the Government realised that revision was inevitable,
and that the safest course would be, with the utmost possible
delay, to permit it. The Dreyfus Case was put in the hands of the
Court of Criminal Appeal, who sat from October to December
- When it became clear that the Court was coming to believe
in Dreyfus's innocence, the proceedings were transferred, with
the support of President Faure, to the United Appeal Courts.
From March to May 1899 they re-examined the evidence with a
meticulous patience which seemed misplaced only to those who
remembered that the guiltless Dreyfus had now been on Devil's
Island for over four years.
Meanwhile Picquart, too, was in grave danger. The Dreyfus-
ards had been over-optimistic in assuming that, since he was now
a civilian, he would be tried by a civil court. The Army was
pressing for his case to be put before a court-martial, and it was
only too likely, if they succeeded, that there would be two
martyrs on Devil's Island. Picquart was denied access to his
lawyer, Lahori, who decided to try the effect of a new petition,
which he organised with the help of the now militant Anatole
France. This time it was France who called on Proust for help:
he asked dear Marcel to secure from Mme Straus one or more of
the biggest names from her salon, preferably that of Comte
Othenin d'Haussonville himself. 'Perhaps he won't refuse, he has
such a great heart, such an elevated mind,' Proust wrote to her
hopefully, 'and yet, M. d'Haussonville would be too good to be
true, so perhaps you could fall back on Ganderax or Dr Pozzi:
But poor Mme Straus, who had seen her salon suffer grievously
for Dreyfus's sake, and was already approaching the intermittent
nervous exhaustion by which she was to be tortured for the
remaining twenty-eight years of her life,! could not even attempt
. so desperate an enterprise. Picquart's petition, however, was no
less imposing than Dreyfus's at the time of I Accuse: among the
signatures, amid a vast array of professors, artists, writers and
even ambassadors, were those of France, Rostand, Porto-Riche,
Brochard, Comte Mathieu de Noailles and the two originals of
1 Mme Straus's facial tic had been particularly noticeable at Mme Lemaire's
on 21. May. Her neurasthenia was hereditary, for her mother, sister and aunt
had aU died insane.
