Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1898 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XI THE APOTHEOSIS OF TREASON We have seen that the press, and in particular an article by Clemenceau, obliged the War Office to recall Colonel Picquart in November 1897 to attend the Esterhazy court-martial. Before he arrived, however, General de Pellieux, who was conducting the preliminary inquiry, on the pretext of searching for contraband matches, broke into Picquart's rooms in Paris, and sacked them. On the other hand Esterhazy, the accused of high treason, was neither arrested nor his house searched--a singular contrast with the treatment meted out to Dreyfus in 1894. Thus left scot-free, Esterhazy lounged about the boulevards, sat in Drumont's editorial office, or arranged with Du Paty the protocols of his acquittal. The first question which Picquart asked when, on reaching Paris, he was brought under surveillance before De Pellieux, was why the latter did not arrest Esterhazy. "The witnesses against him," he said, "will not rise up out of the earth till he is locked up." At the Zola trial, when De Pellieux was asked why he had not at once searched Esterhazy's house, he replied with cynical effrontery that it was absolutely useless, because Picquart had done it eight months before. We have seen that in the autumn of 1896 Esterhazy had been warned, and that Picquart's agent only entered his room, already to let, as any one else might have done. Out of respect for the chose jugee, De Pellieux at first refused to admit the bordereau as evidence against Esterhazy, though it was just the charge of being its author made by Mathieu Dreyfus that had forced the Mat major to prosecute for high treason. "To do so," said De Pellieux in his deposition at the fourth audience of the Zola trial, "seemed to me tantamount to reopening the...
