Page:Jean Jaurès socialist and humanitarian 1917.djvu/75

 that his system could not err, was no sooner confronted by Colonel Picquart two years later with some of Esterhazy's letters than he cried out: "It is the writing of the bordereau," and yet, having once decided that the bordereau had been written by Dreyfus, would not alter his opinion that Dreyfus was its author, even when he was told that these letters were Esterhazy's. Jaurès was tireless in the pursuit of evidence. He shows us three new experts at Esterhazy's trial, forced to account for the writing of the bordereau by a new theory, the theory that Dreyfus traced some of Esterhazy's handwriting and introduced it into the bordereau, and he tells how they supported this idea with the most roundabout and untenable suggestions, while he refers to the fact that at Zola's trial no less than seven savants whose work is amongst manuscripts, and who are experts of a high order in writing, had all without exception agreed that the handwriting was that of Esterhazy. And following his blows home with an almost terrible determination, he shows Esterhazy himself put to the most pitiable shifts to explain the matter, himself owning the resemblance and trying to explain it with elaborate stories of the way in which Dreyfus had obtained by fraud a long document in his handwriting. Jaures leaves nothing to chance, he unmasks first one and then another subterfuge. He shows how the enemies of