's birthday book M. Zola inscribed his
famous, epoch-making phrase, 'Truth is on the march, and nothing will be
able to stop it.' Finally, a few brief notes were written and posted, and
work was over.

For a little while we chatted together. Some notable incidents connected
with the interminable Affair had occurred during the last few days.
Colonel du Paty de Clam, for whose arrest the Revisionist journals had
clamoured so long and so pertinaciously, had at last been cast into
prison. In M. Zola's estimation, the Colonel's arrest had been merely a
question of time ever since the day when one had learnt that he had
disguised himself with a false beard and blue glasses when he went to
meet the notorious Esterhazy.

'A man may be guilty of any misdeed and may yet find forgiveness and even
favour,' M. Zola had then said to me, 'but he must not make himself, his
profession, and his cause ridiculous. In France, as you know, "ridicule
kills." The false beard and the blue spectacles, following the veiled
lady, are decisive. One need scarcely trouble any further about M. du
Paty de Clam. His fate is as good as sealed.'

And now that the Colonel had at last been arrested, the master remarked,
'The military party is throwing him over to us as a kind of sop; it would
be delighted to make him the general scapegoat, and thereby save all the
other culprits. But it won't do. There are men higher placed than Du Paty
who must bear their share of censure and, if need be, punishment.'

Then we spoke of Esterhazy, 'that fine type for a melodrama or a novel of
the romantic school,' as M. Zola often remarked. The Commandant had just
acknowledged to the 'Times' and the 'Daily Chronicle' that the famous
_bordereau_ had been penned by him, and we laughed at the remembrance of
his squabbles on this subject with the proprietress of another newspaper.
How indignantly he had then denied having ever acknowledged the
authorship of the _bordereau_, and how complacently he now admitted it!
As for the circumstances under which he asserted the document to have
been written, M. Zola could make nothing of them. 'So far, the
explanations explain nothing,' said he; 'take them whichever way you
will, there is no sense, no plausibility even, in them. Hitherto I always
thought Esterhazy a very shrewd and clever man, but after reading his
statements in the "Times" and the "Chronicle" I no longer know what to
think. Still, one point is gained; he admits having