when he asked permission to return to get his linen, that his mission was too important to warrant a diversion of even a few hours; and they sent him to Besançon. Thus, without suspecting the fate that was in store for him, he was sent along the frontier, and then to Algeria and Tunis, where, in March, 1897, he was made lieutenant-colonel of the Fourth Sharpshooters. They pretended that he was given this appointment as a favor. General Gonse told him positively, in a letter, that the regiment was a very select one, and that he should consider himself fortunate in belonging to it. The general’s letters are full of expressions of sympathy.” M. Labori.--“M. Leblois referred just now to a threatening letter which intervened at a certain moment, and which apparently modified the state of mind prevailing in the office of the minister of war. Could he tell us when this letter was addressed to Colonel Picquart, from whom it came, and in what spirit it was conceived?” M. Leblois.--“I have already said that this letter was dated June 3, 1897. It came from Lieutenant-Colonel Henry, who had been Colonel Picquart’s subordinate, and it was couched in terms almost insulting.” M. Albert Clemenceau.--“The witness has said that at the same time when Colonel Picquart’s letters were being seized in the war department he was suffered to receive forged telegrams, and that at the same time also General Gonse, sub-chief of the general staff, acted in a very kindly manner toward him. I ask him if these three matters were really contemporaneous.” M. Leblois.--“The reply is simple enough. You must distinguish between two utterly distinct orders of events,--the events at the end of 1896, which was the time of Colonel Picquart’s departure, and the events at the end of 1897. I know of only one letter intercepted at the bureau of information in 1896,--namely, the letter signed ‘Speranza.’ It was at that time that General Gonse showed the greatest sympathy for Colonel Picquart. Coming to the conspiracy of 1897, it is my opinion that letters were then intercepted, but I prefer that the testimony on this point should come from Lieutenant-Colonel Picquart.” M. Clemenceau.--“Yet the witness said just now that they sent a letter to Lieutenant-Colonel Picquart after having opened it.” M. Leblois.--“That was in 1896. It was in December of that year that the Speranza letter was sent.” M. Clemenceau.--“Then my question was appropriate. All these things happened at the same time.” M. Labori.--“Does M. Leblois know of certain facts in the relations that prevailed in 1892 between M. du Paty de Clam and the de Comminges family that offer a singular analogy with the participation of the veiled lady in the Esterhazy case?”