Yet as I turn the pages of the file I see that the episodes have been used by the Colonial Ministry as a pretext to make Dreyfus’s confinement much harsher. For the past three weeks he has been clapped in irons every night. There is even an illustration of the contraption shipped over from the penal colony in Cayenne that is used to restrain him. Two U-shaped irons are fixed to his bed. His ankles are put into these at sundown. A bar is then inserted through the irons and padlocked. He is left in this position until dawn. In addition, a double perimeter fence of heavy timber is being erected around his hut to a height of two and a half metres. The inner fence is only half a metre from his window. Therefore his view of the sea is entirely cut off. And during the day he is no longer allowed access to the island beyond the second perimeter fence. The bare narrow space of rock and scrub between the two walls, in which there are no trees or shade, is now the entirety of his world.
As usual, the file contains an appendix of Dreyfus’s confiscated writings:
I am disinclined to read any further. I have seen what the chafing of leg-irons can do to a prisoner’s flesh: cut it to the bone. In the insect-infested heat of the tropics, the torment must be unendurable. For a moment my pen hovers over the file. But in the end I simply mark it ‘Return to the Colonial Ministry’ and sign the circulation slip without comment.
Later that day I attend a meeting in Gonse’s office to settle last-minute security details for the Tsar’s visit. Sombre-faced men from the Interior and Foreign Ministries, the Sûreté and the Élysée Palace — men full of the grand self-importance of those who handle such issues — sit around the table and discuss the minutiae of the Imperial itinerary.
The Russian flotilla will be escorted into Cherbourg harbour on Monday at 1 p.m. by twelve ironclads. The President of the Republic will meet the Tsar and Tsarina. There will be a dinner for seventy in the Arsenal at 6.30, General Boisdeffre to be seated on the Tsar’s table. On Tuesday morning the Russian Imperial train will arrive in Versailles at 8.50 a.m. The Imperial party will transfer to the President’s train, which will arrive at the Ranelagh railway station at 10 a.m. It will take one and a half hours for the procession to cover the ten-kilometre route into Paris: 80,000 soldiers will be deployed for protection. All suspected terrorists have either been detained or turned away from Paris. After luncheon at the Russian Embassy, the Tsar and Tsarina will visit the Russian Orthodox church in the rue Daru. At 6.30 there will be a state banquet for two hundred and seventy at the Élysée, and at 8.30 fireworks in the Trocadéro followed by a gala performance at the Opéra. On Wednesday. .
My mind keeps wandering eight thousand miles to the shackled figure on Devil’s Island.
When the meeting is finished and everyone is filing out, Gonse asks me to stay for a moment. He could not be friendlier. ‘I’ve been thinking, my dear Picquart. When all this Russian fuss is over, I want you to undertake a special mission to the eastern garrison towns.’
‘To do what, General?’
