, however
great may be public curiosity; but most certainly Zola has not taken up
this case without what he considers to be abundant proof. I do not say he
will be able to prove each and every item of his great indictment, but
when you wish to bring everything to light it is often necessary to cast
your net so wide that none shall escape it, none linger in concealment
with their actions unexplained. And I take it that whatever be the
verdict of Zola's countrymen, whether or not Alfred Dreyfus be again and
this time absolutely proved guilty . . . Zola himself will have done good
work in striving to bring the whole truth to light so that it shall be as
evident to one and all as the very sun itself. And this, when all is
said, is really Zola's one great object in this terrible business.

'I may add that he is risking far more than his great predecessor risked
in favour of Calas. Voltaire pleaded from his retirement on the Swiss
frontier; Zola pleads the cause he has adopted on the very spot, on the
very scene of all the agitation. Anonymous assassins threaten him with
death in letters and postcards. Fanatical Jew-baiters march through the
streets anxious for an opportunity to wreck his house and murder not only
himself but his wife also in the sacred name of Patriotism.* Should their
menaces be escaped there remains the Assize Court with a jury that will
need to be brave indeed if it is to resist all the pressure of a
deliberately organised "terror." At the end possibly lie imprisonment,
fine, disgrace, ruin. How jubilantly some are already rubbing their hands
in the bishops' palaces, the parsonages, the sacristies of France! Ah! no
stone will be kept unturned to secure a conviction! But Emile Zola does
not waver. It may be the truth, the whole truth will only be known to the
world in some distant century; but he, anxious to hasten its advent and
prevent the irreparable, courageously stakes all that he has, person,
position, fame, affections, and friendships. . . . And this he does for
no personal object whatsoever, but in the sole cause of truth and
justice, ever repeating the cry common to both Goethe and himself:
"Light, more light!"

* There is not the slightest doubt that M. Zola incurred the
greatest personal danger between January and April 1898.
M. Ranc, the old and tried Republican, who knows what danger
is, has lately pointed this out in forcible terms in the
Paris journal _Le Matin_.

'Ah! t