Nearly five years had now elapsed from the date of Dreyfus's original condemnation, when, released from his imprisonment, he stood at the Bar after that long period of physical and moral torture. Clemenceau is not a man of sentiment: he had long doubted whether Dreyfus was really innocent: even the outrageous proceedings at the first Court Martial had failed to convince him that there might not be something behind the forged _bordereau_, concealed from the prisoner, which could in a degree justify his judges: not until the close of the case against Zola and _l'Aurore_ was his mind made up that, "consciously or unconsciously," a terrible crime had been committed. But now, with Dreyfus himself present, with all the old witnesses contradicting, more directly than ever, one another's testimony, yet allowed incredible licence of exposition and explanation by the Court; with the evidence of General Gonse, General Mercier, Roget, Cinquet, Gribelin, Lauth and Junck cut to ribands by the questions of Dreyfus's advocates; with Colonel Picquart brought up short by Colonel Jouaust, who had allowed all sorts of long-winded and irreconcilable accounts to be given by his favourites subject to no interruption--with all this almost inconceivable unfairness going on all day and every day through the Rennes Court Martial, Clemenceau seems to have been really affected, not only by the injustice done, but by the personal sufferings which the prisoner on trial had undergone and was undergoing. Colonel Jouaust's interruption of Colonel Picquart's closely knit but passionless statement by the exclamation "_Encore!_" was destined to become famous. It summed up in one word the whole tone of the prosecuting judges on the Bench. Yet as the case proceeded and the criticisms of Clemenceau and his coadjutors became still more scathing than they had been before, it was difficult to see how even a suborned court could avoid a verdict of acquittal. But this Court dared not be just. There was too much at stake. The whole of the chiefs of the army had taken sides against the prisoner. They were there to secure condemnation of Dreyfus again at all costs. The Court, headed by Colonel Jouaust, was forced to do the same. It was the "Honour of the Army" backed by Esterhazy, Henry and Sandherr against the character of one miserable Jew. There could be no hesitation under such conditions. Dreyfus was found "Guilty, with extenuating circumstances." Extenuating circumstances in the dealings of a spy and a traitor who, not being in any pressing pecuniary need whatever, had deliberately and infamously sold France to the enemy! Not one of the five judges who rendered this verdict could really have believed Dreyfus to be guilty. France was more dishonoured by this decision than if the Court had definitely declared against the whole weight of the evidence that Dreyfus was a traitor.