nd thus we were convinced that any letter arriving in Paris
addressed by him would immediately be sent to the 'Cabinet Noir,' where
all suspicious correspondence is opened by certain officials, who
immediately report the contents to the Government.

It has been pretended that of recent years this secret service has been
abolished; but such is by no means the case. It flourishes to-day in the
same way as it flourished under the Second Empire, when Napoleon III.
made a point of acquainting himself with the private correspondence of
his own relatives, his ministers, and his generals. After the revolution
of September 1870, hundreds of copies of more or less compromising
letters, covert attacks on or criticisms of the Imperial Government,
_billets-doux_ also between Imperial princes and their mistresses, and so
forth, were found at the Palace of the Tuilleries; and some of them were
even published by a commission nominated by the Republican Government.

Much of the same kind of thing goes on to-day, and M. Zola, when in Paris
during the earlier stages of the Dreyfus case, had made it a point to
trust no letter of the slightest importance to the Postal Service. On one
occasion, a short time after his arrival in England, we had reason to
fear that a letter addressed by me to Paris had gone astray, and all
correspondence on M. Zola's side was thereupon suspended for several
days. However, the missing letter turned up at last, and from that time
till the conclusion of the master's exile the arrangements devised
between him, Wareham, and myself worked without a hitch.

VII

EXCURSIONS AND ALARUMS

Already at the time of M. Zola's arrival in London I had received a
summons to serve upon the jury at the July Sessions of the Central
Criminal court. I had been excused from service on a previous occasion,
but this time I had no valid excuse to offer, and it followed that I must
either serve or else pay such a fine as the Common Serjeant might direct.
There is always a certain element of doubt in these matters; and while I
might perhaps luckily escape service after a day or two, on the other
hand, I might be kept at the Old Bailey for more than a week. At any
other time I should have accepted my fate without a murmur; but I was
greatly worried as to what might befall M. Zola during my absence in
London, and I more than once thought of defaulting and 'paying up.' But
the ma