As has been said, the conditions under which these letters were written forbade the author to indulge in details concerning the circumstances of his awful fate. Hence, for a fuller appreciation and a better understanding of the emotions that moved the writer at given periods, the following data must constantly be borne in mind: Dreyfus was arrested October 15, 1894; his trial by court-martial began December 19 of the same year and ended December 23. The condemned man was publicly degraded January 5, 1895, and on the 9th day of the following February the Chamber passed a law decreeing his place of confinement to be French Guiana, in South America; in March he was transported thither. The prisoner wrote regularly to his wife until the spring of 1898, when he became a victim of the conditions of his solitary position. In September, 1898, he bade a final adieu to his wife and children and declared that he would write no more.[A] He was beset with unconquerable sadness. He complained to his physician, Dr. Veugnon, of Cayenne, of mental exhaustion and insomnia. He was haunted by the “fixed idea” to exculpate himself from the charge of treason. Yet he could only deny and deny. He knew nothing of what was passing in Paris and in the world at large. On November 15, 1898, M. Darius, the Procureur Général of Cayenne, entered the room occupied by the prisoner on the Ile du Diable and said to him, “Dreyfus, the Cour de Cassation has decided to revise your case. What have you to say?” Dreyfus seemed like one dazed. The day for which he had so fervently prayed had come at last. Yet, according to his inquisitor, this is what he replied: “I shall say nothing until I am confronted by my accusers in Paris.” No further facts were revealed to him, but, under the direction of the authorities in Paris, he was interrogated at given periods. In the mean time he was left a prey to strange conjectures concerning his ultimate fate. On July 3, 1899, he was told that he was to be taken immediately to France to stand trial before a new court-martial at Rennes. He had been a prisoner on the Ile du Diable for more than fifty months. Alfred Dreyfus, captain in the 14th Artillery, was appointed to the General Staff of the French Army in 1893. He was the first Jew to be so honored. His record at the Chaptal College, at Sainte-Barbe, at the Ecole Polytechnique, at the Ecole d’Application, at the Ecole de Guerre, no less than his service in the 31st Regiment of Artillery, in the 4th Mounted Battery, and in the 21st Regiment of Artillery, shows that he deserved the distinction. The words of praise that his chiefs then wrote of him are in strange contrast with their later reflections.