ndon Press and
that in each case his statements had been maliciously distorted. He
asked me if I would represent him truly and would allow him to tell his
story without comment. I made the promise and, of course, I kept it, but
as a matter of fact he had no case to offer. He described the general
staff of the French army as _un tas de scelerats_, and he alleged that
he had been hounded down by his enemies and betrayed by those who had
pretended to be his friends. As he talked he leant forward in his chair,
tapping the parquet nervously with his walking-stick, and every now and
then sending a curiously furtive glance in my direction, for all the
world as if he were asking in his own mind: "Have you found me out yet?"
"I would ask nothing better," he told me, "than to put myself at the
head of my regiment and to march my men through Paris, and to shoot down
every Jew who lives in it. I would shoot them down like rabbits, 'sans
rancune et sans remords.'" He flashed that strange furtive glance at me
and took his walking-stick in both hands: "I have a dream," he went on,
"it comes to me often. I see myself in a room where the walls are white
and the ceiling is white and the floor is white, and all my enemies are
there before me. I rush amongst them with this stick only and I strike,
and I strike, and I strike until the walls are red and the ceiling is
red and the floor is red. Ah! I shall have my turn one day." I wired all
this meaningless farrago to the _Daily News_ that night, but with much
more nonsense to the same effect, and on the following day it was all
duly printed. I mention this little fact for a reason. In M. Anatole
France's novel, _L'Anneau d'Amethyste_, which appeared much later than
the account of my interview with Esterhazy, a character is introduced
who talks precisely in that gentleman's manner and who, amongst other
things, relates that identical dream; from which one gathers that he
must have told it more than once. It was most probably a habit of his,
for all his phrases had a manufactured air, and he seemed much more like
an actor reciting a familiar part than as if he spoke on the spur of the
moment. Later on, as everybody knows, he sold a confession in which
he proclaimed himself the author of the _Bordereau_. Later still he
repudiated the confession, though by that time there was no doubt in any
sane man's mind that it was true. So long as the _affaire Dreyfus_ is
remembered, Esterhazy will in all lik