Resolution of the Dreyfus Affair

On the same day as this arrest the examining magistrate Bertulus, disregarding the threats and entreaties directed at him, on his own initiative (as an official note put it) sent Major Esterhazy and his mistress, Marguerite Pays, to prison on the charge of forgery and of using forgeries. He had become convinced that the "Speranza" telegram was the work of Madame Pays, and that they were not altogether innocent of the sending of the "Blanche" telegram. Then, when Bertulus had decided to send Esterhazy and his mistress before the Assize Court, the Chambre des Mises en Accusation interfered and gave them the benefit of insufficient evidence (August 12), and also declared that the complicity of Du Paty had not been sufficiently proved.

After being acquitted, Esterhazy was set free; but he did not come out of this troublesome adventure unscathed. Already, in his speech of July 7, Godefroy Cavaignac had announced that this officer would "receive the disciplinary punishments he deserved," and transferred his case to a disciplinary board. Before this board, presided over by General de St. Germain, Esterhazy, trying to avenge himself, made revelations which were most compromising for himself as well as for his protectors. He told of his collusion with the General Staff and of his threatening letters to the President of the Republic. Nevertheless, the board declined to find him guilty of having failed either in discipline or in matters of honor; they sustained only (and by a majority of one) the charge of "habitual misconduct." Notwithstanding a letter from General Zurlinden, military governor of Paris, recommending indulgence, Esterhazy's name was struck off the army lists by the minister of war (August 31).

But just at this time an incident of far greater importance changed the aspect of affairs. Cavaignac, in spite of his self-assurance, had nonetheless been agitated by the doubts expressed on all sides as to the authenticity of certain documents in his dossier. In order to ease his mind he ordered a general review and a reclassification of the secret dossier. In the course of this operation Major Cuignet (), working by artificial light, noticed an alarming peculiarity in the "Henry document": the lines on the paper—which was ruled in squares—were not of uniform colour. When he looked at the document supplied by Lieutenant-Colonel Henry himself for comparison he found, by comparing the ruled squares, that the heading and the lower part of the document did not match, the note being a composite of two papers, one dating from 1894, the other from 1896. Much alarmed by his discovery, Cuignet apprised the chief of the cabinet (General Roget) and the minister, Cavaignac. The conviction of these two, hitherto unshaken by the nonsense and the improbability of the "Vercingétorix document"—as Esterhazy had called it—gave way before the mismatch of the squares ruled on the paper. Cavaignac, for motives still unknown, kept the matter secret for a fortnight. Then, as Henry was passing through Paris, he summoned him to the War Office and questioned him in the presence of Generals de Boisdeffre, Gonse, and Roget. Henry began by swearing that the document was authentic, then got entangled in confused explanations, suggesting that he had completed certain parts of it "from oral information"; in the end, conquered by the evidence against him, he admitted that he had forged the document. Generals de Boisdeffre and Gonse, who in 1896 had accepted this forgery without question, now kept a frigid silence. Abandoned by the chiefs who had tacitly driven him to the crime, Henry gave way entirely.

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