and convince the public."

"Why did the generals want to condemn him, if he was not guilty?" I
asked.

"They had to condemn some one," said my friend, who was beginning to
be dreadfully bored. "The generals found Dreyfus guilty, therefore
Dreyfus was guilty without doubt."

"Do you think that if an injustice has been done it will create a
great indignation in other countries and will affect the coming
Exposition?" I inquired.

"Ah," said my wise friend, "_that_ is another thing. I think myself
that it would be prudent to do something toward revising the judgment;
everything ought to be done to make the Exposition a success."

And there the matter rested.

I doubt if his friendship stood this test. Any one who takes Dreyfus's
defense is looked upon as an enemy in the camp. I devour the papers.
_Le Matin_ seems to be the only unprejudiced one. J. reads the others,
but I have no patience with all their cooked-up and melodramatic
stories.

On the 11th of September the King of Siam gave the diplomats an
opportunity to meet him at a reception in the new and beautiful
Siamese Legation.

The King is good-looking, and tall for a Siamese. He talked English
perfectly and showed the greatest interest in everything he had seen.
When he left Paris a few days later he bought three hundred dozen
pairs of silk stockings for his three hundred wives. Quite a sum for
the royal budget! One can't imagine bigamy going much further than
that, can one? And he is only forty-two years old!

I was very glad to meet Colonel Picquard at a dinner in a Dreyfusard
house. All that I had heard of him made me feel a great admiration for
him. I was not disappointed. He is a most charming man, handsome, with
such an honest and kind face. I hoped he would talk with me about
Dreyfus, and said as much to my hostess, who in her turn must have
said "as much" to him, for he came and sat by me. I did not hesitate
to broach the tabooed subject. He said: "I do not and have never
thought that Dreyfus was guilty. He may have done something else, but
he never, in my belief, wrote the _bordereau_. I had not known him
before. I was the officer who was sent to his cell to make him write
his name; they forced him to write it a hundred times. He was
perfectly calm, but it was so cold in his room that his fingers were
stiff and his hands trembled. He kept saying, 'Why am I to do this?' I
was convinced then and there of his innocence. I could have wept with
compa