In spite of the unanimous feeling of Dreyfus's guilt, his family did not lose faith in him, and his brother Mathieu set about the apparently impossible task of rehabilitation. But it chanced that one other person began to have doubts of the justice of Dreyfus's condemnation. This was Lieutenant-Colonel Picquart, who had been present at the court-martial as representative of the War Department, and who had since become chief of the espionage service, and Henry's superior. Another document stolen from a waste-paper basket at the German Embassy, an unforwarded pneumatic despatch (_petit bleu_), was brought to him, and directed his suspicions to Esterhazy, to whom it was addressed. At first he did not connect Esterhazy and Dreyfus, but on obtaining specimens of Esterhazy's handwriting he was struck by the likeness with that of the _bordereau_. Then, examining the secret _dossier_, to which he now had access, he was stupefied to see its insignificance. [Illustration: MARIE-GEORGES PICQUART] From this time on, Picquart worked, with extraordinary tenacity of purpose and against all obstacles, for the rehabilitation of a stranger. Everybody was against him. His chief subordinate Henry dreaded revelations above all things, and set his colleagues against him. His superiors disliked any suggestion that an army court could have made a mistake, the remedying of which would help a Jew. Gradually, however, the agitation started by Mathieu Dreyfus was becoming stronger. He had won the help of a skilled writer Bernard Lazare; a daily paper succeeded in obtaining and publishing a facsimile of the _bordereau_. But Picquart was sent away from Paris on a tour of inspection, and when the matter came up in the Chamber, through an interpellation, the Minister of War, General Billot, declared that the judgment of 1894 was absolutely legal and just. Matters thus seemed settled again.