380
PARTISAN REVIEW
To
ALEXEI SUVORIN
February
6, 1898,
Nice
A few days ago I saw a striking announcement on the first page
of
New Time
on the forthcoming issue of
Cosmopolis,
which will
contain my story, "On A Visit." To begin with, my story isn't called
"On A Visit" but "Visiting with Friends." In the second place, this
sort of publicity goes against the grain; let alone the fact that the
story itself is far from unusual, being one of those things you grind
out one per day.
You write you are provoked with Zola, while here the general
feeling is as though a new, better Zola had come into being. In this
trial of his he has cleaned off all his external grease spots with tur–
pentine, as it were, and now gleams before the French in his true
brilliance. His is a purity and moral elevation which no one had sus–
pected. Just trace the whole scandal from the beginning. The degrada–
tion of Dreyfus, whether just or otherwise, had a depressing, dismal
effect on everyone (among others on you, too, as I recall). At the
time of
his
sentencing Dreyfus conducted himself like an honorable,
well-disciplined officer, while others present, the journalists, for in–
stance, yelled at him, "Shut up, you Judas!" i.e., behaved themselves
scandalously. Everybody came away dissatisfied and left the court–
room with a troubled conscience. Particularly dissatisfied was Drey–
fus' defense attorney, Demange, an honest man, who even during
the preliminary hearing had felt something was wrong behind the
scenes; then there were the experts, who, to convince themselves that
they were not mistaken, spoke only of Dreyfus, of his guilt, and kept
roaming through Paris, roaming.... Of the experts, one turned out
to be crazy, the author of a grotesque, absurd scheme, two were
eccentrics. The logic of the situation was such that one was bound
to question the intelligence bureau of the War Ministry, that military
consistory devoted to spy-hunting and reading other people's letters;
then people started saying that Sandher, the bureau chief, was af–
flicted with progressive paralysis; Paty de Clam turned out to be al–
most a counterpart of the Berliner, Tausch; and Picquart resigned,
suddenly and mysteriously. A regular series of gross errors of justice
came to light, as though purposely arranged. People became con–
vinced, little by little, that Dreyfus had really been condemned on
the basis of a secret document which had not been shown either to
