The Prisoner in the Mask Read online

  Zola escaped prison by flight to England, but Dreyfusists and anti-Dreyfusists continued to hurl abuse at one another. There were numerous duels, especially between the journalists. Clemenceau and Drumont fired three times at each other, but all six shots missed. Picquart challenged Henry and Esterhazy Picquart. The only result was a slight wound in Henry’s arm. The day before he received it his tame forger, Leeman, was found hanged in his lodgings. Perhaps he had committed suicide, but a lot of people later thought that he had been put out of the way.

  That summer and autumn there had followed the fall of two Governments, Picquart’s arrest on a charge of having disclosed official secrets, and the discovery that the faux Henry was a forgery. Henry was arrested, confessed and blew his brains out. Esterhazy was then dismissed from the service and fled to Belgium. Finally there came a government decision that the Court of Criminal Appeal should examine the arguments for reopening the original case.

  In February ’99 M. Félix Faure died while in amorous dalliance with a pretty woman in his private office. Soon after half-past six the lady’s screams for help brought his Chef-de-Bureau running, but the President had been stricken by a cerebral haemorrhage and it was too late to do anything for him.

  He was succeeded by Emile Loubet, who was known to be in favour of revision, which led to further riots. But after their long struggle the Dreyfusists were at last gaining ground. In June the united Appeal Courts gave their verdict in favour of a retrial. Another government fell, du Paty was arrested and Dreyfus brought back in a cruiser from Devil’s Island.

  The new court martial was held at Rennes and opened early in August. It lasted for over a month, while the seven officer judges sought to unravel the incredibly tangled skein which had evolved from five years of misunderstandings, lies, forgeries, suppressions and false accusations. An ex-President, an ex-Premier, General Mercier and all the War Ministers subsequent to him, a dozen Generals, scores of other officers, police, warders, experts, women and pushful publicity seekers were called to give evidence. Madame Dreyfus was hounded from her hotel and a fanatic attempted to assassinate Dreyfus’s counsel; but, to the fury of the greater part of the French people, the World Press was solidly of the opinion that Dreyfus’s first conviction had been a flagrant miscarriage of justice.

  Nevertheless he was found ‘Guilty’ again by a majority of five to two but, on ‘extenuating circumstances’, his sentence was reduced to ten years’ detention. He had already served four and three-quarter years and had returned from Devil’s Island broken both mentally and physically. De Galliffet, as Minister of War, requested that the balance of the sentence should be remitted, and on September 19th the President issued a pardon. By this step de Galliffet hoped to end this shocking affair for good and all, and he issued a manifesto to the Army and the Press to the effect that it must now be regarded as closed.

  But it was far from closed. For years Dreyfus’s supporters endeavoured to clear his name by agitating for another retrial; or, alternatively, the trial of Mercier, de Boisdeffre, Gonse, du Paty and others for the parts they had played. There were more duels, more riots and many thousands more hours spent by leading jurists re-examining the evidence. It was not until July 1906 that Dreyfus’s innocence was finally admitted in a special Bill passed by the Chamber, and he was decorated with the Legion of Honour (4th class). Picquart fared better. In a Bill of the same date he was reinstated with the rank of Brigadier and a few months later, when Clemenceau became Prime Minister to spite the Army, he made him his War Minister.

  De Quesnoy reached Algiers while the Rennes trial was in progress, and read the reports of its later stages there; but he was soon posted up country and attached to the Headquarters of a regiment of Spahis. His early promotion to Captain now stood him in good stead, as his Colonel, finding him a born cavalry officer, soon gave him a squadron.

  Then fate favoured him further by a decision of the Government to send forces across the Atlas mountains for the occupation of many thousands of square miles of territory to the south of them. Not only did this give him a chance to show his mettle in active warfare, but during their mountain and desert campaigns squadrons often operated a day or more’s march apart, so he was virtually in command of an independent unit. It was was not many months before his brilliant exploits became the talk of the frontier region and were reported to General Lyautey. Within eighteen months of landing in North Africa he was promoted to brevet Major, and three months before his recall to France he had been given another step to brevet Lieutenant-Colonel.

  As the waiter helped him to the flaming Omelette au Rhum that he had ordered to follow the bouillabaisse he was thinking not of the past but of the future, and particularly of a letter that had been handed to him by a military messenger immediately his ship had docked at Marseilles that morning. It was from a General Laveriac who was now Assistant Chief of Staff at the War Office; but it was on private paper headed ‘Château d’Albaron, Camargue, Bouches du Rhone’, and simply said:

  Before you proceed to Paris I wish you to report to me here. Please telegraph the time of arrival of your train at Arles and a carriage will be sent in to meet you. Make no arrangements for the next few days as our host would like you to stay over the week-end.

  Having never met the General, de Quesnoy was considerably puzzled by this semi-official, semi-private missive, and the fact that he was evidently supposed to know who ‘our host’ was; for until that morning he had been unaware that such a place as the Château d’Albaron existed. However, as soon as he had parked his baggage at the Hôtel du Louvre et de la Paix, he made inquiries about trains, and as Arles was only some fifty miles distant he sent a telegram saying that he was proceeding there that afternoon.

  One of his interests being ancient civilisations, he had during his three and a half years in North Africa spent two of his leaves in Rome and others in Athens, Sicily and Crete; so Arles being a Roman city he would have liked to visit its Colosseum and other remains; but a servant in plain livery was on the station platform to meet him, which gave him no option but to set off for Albaron as soon as his belongings had been loaded into a wagonette.

  Not liking to confess his ignorance, he refrained from asking the coachman or groom the name of their master, but he learnt from them that Albaron was a good ten miles distant so he settled down to make the best of the hour’s drive.

  The pale winter sunshine was quite pleasant but the country was flat and uninteresting; so he was glad when the coachman pointed ahead with his whip to a distant building on a slight eminence and told him it was the Château.

  As they approached, the Count saw that it was one in the original sense—a sixteenth-century castle with pointed turrets and battlements—although not a very big one; but perched up on its hillock it dominated the country for many miles around. At length the horses drew the wagonette slowly up the steepish drive that almost circled the big mound, and with every metre they advanced de Quesnoy was able to survey a greater part of the castle’s surroundings.

  About a mile to the east of it lay a small compact town, but there was hardly a building to be seen in any other part of the landscape. There were no woods or cultivated land; coarse tussocky grass divided into fields by water-filled ditches made up the immediate prospect, while away in the distance to the south lay the vast waterlogged Camargue, with its innumerable lakes and marshes straggling down to the sea. This desolate region, as de Quesnoy was aware, supported only herds of semi-wild cattle and a very sparse population; so it struck him that it was particularly well suited for meetings which it was desired to keep secret, and he had no need of his psychic faculties to tell him that there must be some very special reason for his summons to this lonely castle.

  But, as he entered the spacious hall, he got a pleasant surprise. The wagonette had been observed crawling up the drive and his host was there to greet him. One glance at the tall, stooping, be-whiskered figure, who looked much more than his age owing to his premature baldness, and de Quesnoy e
xclaimed:

  ‘Why, Vicomte, how stupid of me! I should have realised that since you take your title from the Camargue, you might have a château in it; but I confess that I had never heard your name associated with Albaron. I had not the faintest idea whose guest I was to be until this moment.’

  ‘Fanthy that!’ the Vicomte lisped. ‘Well, well, no matter. After all ith quite understandable. When you were stathioned in Paris we had the pleasure of seeing you only occasionally; so even if we ever mentioned Albawon to you, after so long you might well have forgotten it. Gilles should have mentioned it in hith letter. By Gilles I mean, of course, my bwother-in-law General Lavewiac.’

  At that moment Madame de Camargue and her brother appeared. Having kissed his hostess’s hand and murmured how delighted he was to see her again, de Quesnoy was presented to the General. Like his sister, he was short and dark, a typical Gascon, with a hooked nose, black eyes and an animated manner. To meet he proved much more congenial than his letter would have suggested. He explained that, being due for a fortnight’s leave, he had decided to spend it with his relatives in the southern sunshine, and that knowing de Quesnoy to be a friend of theirs it had occurred to him that the Château d’Albaron would be a good place to discuss the Count’s next posting.

  After de Quesnoy had been refreshed with that forerunner of the dry Martini, a glass of the dry Vermouth made near Marseilles, he was taken to his room, where a footman unpacked for him and laid out his things for dinner. Having changed, he was first downstairs, and he had been in the Vicomtesse’s drawing-room for only a few minutes when he received another surprise—Gabriel Syveton walked in.

  De Quesnoy’s heart gave such a bump that he had difficulty in controlling himself sufficiently to greet the politician with composure. He jumped to the conclusion that since Syveton was staying at the Château, Angela would also be there, and that it might be she who had secretly stage-managed his being invited to Albaron.

  During his six years in exile they had written to each other once in every three or four months, although only to exchange news and ideas. This regular correspondence had strengthened their long established friendship but the epistles of neither of them could have been classed as love letters. Had they actually become lovers de Quesnoy might have returned to Paris during his long leave in ’99 in the hope of renewing their affaire; but he had felt certain that Angela would not consent to become his mistress for what could have amounted only to an amour lasting a few weeks.

  And now, after the first moment, in view of their long separation, he could not give serious credit to his wild idea that, having learned of his imminent return, she was still sufficiently interested to have entered on an intricate intrigue in order to come south and welcome him. Nevertheless when, in answer to his enquiry, Syveton told him that Angela was not even at the Château, but staying with English friends in a villa at Mentone, he felt a sharp pang of disappointment.

  For some years now Syveton had been the Treasurer of the Ligue de la Patrie Française and, as de Quesnoy knew from Angela’s letters, had in the previous May been elected Deputy for the Paris Bourse district; so he congratulated him upon it.

  It transpired that there were no other guests and the Vicomtesse, being the only woman of the party, declared at the end of dinner that she would release them from attendance on her in the drawing-room afterwards, as she had letters to write and would go straight upstairs.

  The habit of smoking after dinner was now spreading rapidly; so as soon as she had left them cigars were handed round with the cognac, Chartreuse and Kummel, and the men lit up. When the servants had withdrawn there was a little desultory conversation, then Laveriac looked across at de Quesnoy and said:

  ‘I expect you have been wondering, Count, why I should have asked you to report to me here rather than at the War Office; but it really is to discuss your future employment. General de Galliffet, I know, was anxious that you should enter the Ecole Supérieure de Guerre as soon as you were qualified by age to do so, and you are now old enough. However, before I proceed further I should like to have your assurance that everything which may be said here tonight will be regarded by you as confided to a man of honour.’

  De Quesnoy having given his assent, the General went on: ‘De Galliffet’s time at the War Office was all too short and his retirement for political reasons in May 1900 was a sad blow to the Army. Unfortunately his successor, General André, is not only a most unlikeable personality but a menace to the safety of the State. No one would seek to challenge his right to hold private views of a Leftist and anti-clerical nature; but the wicked thing is that he is allowing his political prejudices to operate against the Army’s senior officers. Generals and Colonels of proved worth are being deliberately passed over, because they are either monarchists at heart or practising Catholics, and mediocre men are being put over their heads solely because they are people of no breeding and atheists.’

  ‘That is bad,’ de Quesnoy murmured, ‘very bad. Because among the officers of the Army there must be at least ten Catholics for every free thinker; so if all the most responsible jobs are being given to the latter it will reduce the operational potential of the service by a really alarming degree.’

  ‘Exactly,’ the General nodded. ‘Of course, as Assistant Chief of Staff, I am in a quite strong enough position to provide you with a nomination should you decide that you would like to enter the Ecole Supérieure de Guerre. There is, however, an alternative; and about that I think it more fitting that my brother-in-law should speak to you.’

  De Camargue gave a slight cough, then asked de Quesnoy: ‘Duwing your campaigns in the desert, Count, have you followed our kaleidoscope politics, or have you found yourself too occupied with militerwe matters?’

  ‘When stationed in the outposts of the Sahara,’ the Count replied, ‘the news from Paris sometimes does not reach one until it is several weeks old. Stale news loses much of its interest; so out there we don’t bother to follow events very closely. But what General Laveriac has just been saying about General Andre’s policy is entirely in keeping with all I have heard these past six months. Since the fall of the Waldeck-Rousseau government it has become obvious that the Church is to be afflicted with another wave of persecution.’

  ‘The greatest mistake ever made,’ Syveton chipped in, ‘was His Holiness’s initiation of the “Ralliement”. By telling French Catholics to accept democracy and rally to the Republic, Rome put our chances of a restoration back ten years; yet in the long run has failed to get the protection for her interests that she expected from the unwritten bargain. Even under the Ribot ministry during ’95 it became apparent that the Centre had no intention of compromising itself through standing by the Church; and now that Combes is in the saddle she will be made to pay the full price for siding with the “Slut” instead of helping to give France a monarch.’

  ‘What sort of man is the Prime Minister?’ inquired de Quesnoy. ‘I know little about him except that he is over seventy and said to be strongly anti-clerical.’

  ‘You understate the case. Emile Combes is probably the most fanatical atheist in France. In his youth he was a seminarist, but he was unfrocked and took to medicine. He has little interest in foreign policy, finance or even social problems. His one ambition is the destruction of the Church and that he may have the maximum opportunity to enforce the measures he means to put through he has taken over the Ministry of Public Worship personally.’

  ‘The tragedy ith that we might have been spared him,’ de Camargue commented. ‘Waldeck-Rousseau had done so well. Many of us gwumbled when on forming his government in ’99 he took the Socialist, Millewand, in as his Minister of Commerce. But the move pwoved a wise one. Millewand ith an able fellow, and although he had twouble with his own people for accepting office hith inclusion kept Guesde and Jaurès and their extremist followers weasonably quiet. And for thwee years too; the longest term that any Ministwy has lasted since 1870. Having won the general election last summer Waldeck-Rousseau had a
n ample majowity to carry on. His wetirement while still Pwemier was unpwecedented. I suppose he had hith pwivate weasons, but without him hith cabinet fell to pieces; and it ith that which has landed us with the unspeakable Combes.’

  Laveriac rapped the table sharply with his knuckles. ‘Mon ami, I must call you to order. We have got away from the matter we are here to discuss. Besides, regrettable as Combes becoming Prime Minister may be for the immediate interests of the Church, it cannot fail to excite reactions which, in the long run, will prove most favourable to our designs.’

  ‘You mean that it will put an end to the Ralliement,’ de Camargue replied, ‘and bwing back to us the support of Catholics of all classes. That ith bound to happen and, in fact, it ith upon such a falling away of loyalty to the “Slut” that we are largely counting. I had not lost sight of that, but was perhaps a little cawied away by the thought of the disgwace it is for Fwance to have such a Pwime Minister. To proceed then….’ Turning, the Vicomte looked across at de Quesnoy, and asked:’

  ‘Does the title Duke de Vendôme mean anything to you?’

  ‘I know it as one of the greatest in the ancien régime. Apart from having been created by Henry of Navarre for his son by Gabriel d’Estress, Bourbon blood has several times since been introduced by females into the Vendôme family. The present Duke must now be a young man. His father died when he was quite young and his mother was a Spanish Princess. If I remember she remarried and her second husband is a Spanish nobleman.’

  ‘All that ith correct. Hith mother is an aunt of the pwesent King of Spain; so he has Bourbon blood on her side too and as first cousin to the King he ith styled His Highness. En secondes noces she married the Conde de Cordoba y Coralles, a gentleman who combines with an ancient title the Pwesidency of the Banco Coralles, and ith said to be one of the wichest men in Spain. The young Duke was brought up there, but he was born in Fwance and by weturning to enter the Fwench Army he has duly established hith Fwench citizenship. However, what I asked you was:—“Does the name Fwançois de Vendôme weawaken in your mind any special memory?”’