On the 11th of September the King of Siam gave the diplomats an opportunity to meet him at a reception in the new and beautiful Siamese Legation. The King is good-looking, and tall for a Siamese. He talked English perfectly and showed the greatest interest in everything he had seen. When he left Paris a few days later he bought three hundred dozen pairs of silk stockings for his three hundred wives. Quite a sum for the royal budget! One can't imagine bigamy going much further than that, can one? And he is only forty-two years old! I was very glad to meet Colonel Picquard at a dinner in a Dreyfusard house. All that I had heard of him made me feel a great admiration for him. I was not disappointed. He is a most charming man, handsome, with such an honest and kind face. I hoped he would talk with me about Dreyfus, and said as much to my hostess, who in her turn must have said "as much" to him, for he came and sat by me. I did not hesitate to broach the tabooed subject. He said: "I do not and have never thought that Dreyfus was guilty. He may have done something else, but he never, in my belief, wrote the _bordereau_. I had not known him before. I was the officer who was sent to his cell to make him write his name; they forced him to write it a hundred times. He was perfectly calm, but it was so cold in his room that his fingers were stiff and his hands trembled. He kept saying, 'Why am I to do this?' I was convinced then and there of his innocence. I could have wept with compassion when I saw how unconscious the poor fellow was. I was also on duty," he added, "when Dreyfus was conducted to the Ecole Militaire the day he was degraded before the troops: his epaulettes were torn from his shoulders and his sword was broken in two. I never could have imagined that any one could endure so much. My heart bled for him." Dreyfus was imprisoned _two weeks_ and subjected every day to mysterious questionings, of which he could not divine the purpose. Neither he nor his counsel knew on what grounds he was arrested. Forzinetti, who was in charge of Dreyfus's prison, also believed him innocent, and said he had never seen a man suffer as he did. He kept repeating, "My only crime is having been born a Jew." He has been confined ever since on the _Ile du Diable_ under the strictest surveillance. His jailer was not allowed to speak to him. When airing himself in the little inclosure, exposed to the awful heat, there was always a gun pointed at him. Sometimes he was chained to his bed with irons, and a loaded pistol was always placed by his side in case he became weary of life. Colonel Picquard said: "It can only be the strong desire to prove his innocence that keeps his courage up." Colonel Schwartkopfen (the German military _attaché_ in Paris) declares solemnly to any one who will listen that the German Embassy has never had anything to do with Dreyfus, and the _bordereau_ is unknown there.