Proud Tower - Barbara W. Tuchman [118]
But the ripples of doubt started by Lazare spread and the Dreyfusard movement was launched. It caught up Lucien Herr, librarian of the Ecole Normale Supérieure, heart of the academic world. Here the keenest students in the country were prepared by the most learned professors for careers as the future teachers of France. Herr was a believer in Socialism, a friend and preceptor of the student world. During the summer vacation of 1897 he used to ride over every afternoon to discuss ideas with his young friend, Léon Blum. One day he said point-blank, “Do you know that Dreyfus is innocent?” It took Blum a moment to place the name; then he remembered the officer convicted of treason. He was startled, having like most of the public accepted the report of Dreyfus’ confession as the official version. Herr’s influence was pervasive. “He directed our conscience and our thought,” wrote Blum. “He perceived truth so completely that he could communicate it without effort.”
Elsewhere men who had been collaborators of Gambetta in the founding of the Third Republic, and to whom the principles for which it stood were sacred, stirred and felt uneasy. Two especially became active: Senator Ranc, a leading Radical and a member of the first Government of the Republic, and the younger Joseph Reinach, who in his twenties had been Gambetta’s chief secretary. As the nephew and son-in-law of the venal Baron de Reinach of Panama ill-fame, he had cause for extra sensitivity, although it was less Jewish sympathies than concern for French justice that moved him. They found their champion in a man universally respected, Senator Scheurer-Kestner, Vice-President of the Senate, a founder of the Republic and onetime editor of Gambetta’s paper La République Française.
As a native of Alsace who after 1871 had chosen to live in France, he had been appointed Senator for life and was regarded as the embodiment of the lost province. A dignified gentleman of substance, old family and quiet elegance, he represented the aristocracy of the Republic. When a reporter from La Libre Parole came to interview him and sat himself down in an armchair, “the Duc de Saint-Simon himself,” it was said, “could not have been more scandalized” than Scheurer-Kestner, who was outraged at anyone from such a paper entering his house. When he learned that the Army had suppressed evidence showing the man on Devil’s Island to be innocent and Esterhazy to be the real author of the document used to convict him, he was horrified.
This evidence had been discovered by an Army officer, Colonel Picquart, who had been appointed new chief of the Counter-Espionage Bureau some months after Dreyfus’ conviction. When he presented his findings to the Chief and Assistant Chief of the General Staff, Generals Boisdeffre and Gonse, he met a wall of refusal either to prosecute Esterhazy or release Dreyfus. When Picquart insisted, Gonse asked him why he made such a point of bringing Dreyfus back from Devil’s Island.
“But, General, he is innocent!” Picquart replied. He was told that this was “unimportant,” the case could not be reopened, General Mercier was involved, and the evidence against Esterhazy was not definitive. When Picquart suggested that matters would be worse if the Dreyfus family, known to be investigating, turned up the truth, Gonse replied, “If you say nothing no one will know.”
Picquart stared at him. “That is abominable, General. I will not