“I know what the answer will be. It will be the eternal pretext of national security. But how was that concerned in view of the fact that the doors were closed? I say to the audacious apostles of the _raison d’Etat_, which might have had its justification under Louis XIV or under Napoleon, but which has no justification today,--I answer to these archaic apostles of an idea henceforth destroyed: If you invoke the _raison d’Etat_, invoke it to the end, but do not try people. If, General Mercier, you were sure of the guilt of the traitor, and if you felt sufficient firmness of heart to assume the responsibility of prosecution under conditions so lamentable, it was not even necessary to carry out the prosecution. You should have struck this man on your own responsibility, ruined him definitively, plunged him into I know not what abyss or what dungeon, that he might never more have been heard of; but you should not have given us the spectacle of a lamentable and audacious judicial comedy. “But let us go on, gentlemen. The question, here, then, is one of writing, pure and simple; that is the charge. Since then, a fact of great importance has come to light; writing identical with that of the _bordereau_ has been discovered. We will not ask at this moment in whose hand this document has been written? The very subtle distinction of the experts has not escaped you. The writing of a document may be the writing of a certain person, and yet the document may not be of this person’s hand, because it may be forged or traced. There may be room for discussion as to whether the _bordereau_ was forged, as to whether it was traced, but there is no room for discussion as to the identity of handwritings, and the proof is that Major Esterhazy admitted it from the first day, even before he was denounced. And it is an interesting fact in this case that, on the eve of every new development, from whatever direction, Major Esterhazy foretold it, and, even before the documents were published, he announced a plot woven by a certain Colonel X or Y, which was intended to ruin him, and in the course of which would be produced a writing frightfully like his own. Then, gentlemen, there is no doubt. I do not say that the _bordereau_ is of the hand of Major Esterhazy. I will come to that later. I say the writing of the _bordereau_, is the writing of Major Esterhazy. Well, confining myself to that for the moment, there is a contradiction between this and the conclusions of the experts in 1894. We know very well that, if the _bordereau_ is in a handwriting identical with that of Major Esterhazy, it is not the writing of Dreyfus. The hypothesis of a tracing by Dreyfus is inadmissible. If Dreyfus has imitated any handwriting, it is, M. Bertillon tells us, his own. Never has it been supposed that he imitated Major Esterhazy’s handwriting, and, if he had done so, it would have been with some design. And then, being accused,