As a result of this secret trial the accused was found guilty and condemned to be degraded from his military rank, and by a special act of the Chamber of Deputies was ordered to be imprisoned for life in a penal settlement on Devil’s Island, off the coast of French Guiana, a tropical region, desolate and malarious in character. The sentence was executed with the most cruel harshness. During part of his detention Dreyfus was locked in a hut, surrounded by an iron cage, on the island. This was done on the plea of possible attempts at rescue. He was allowed to send and receive only such letters as had been transcribed by one of his guardians. He denied, and never ceased to deny, his guilt. The letters he wrote to his counsel after the trial and after his disgrace are most pathetic assertions of his innocence, and of the hope that ultimately justice would be done him. His wife and family continued to deny his guilt, and used every influence to get his case reopened. The whole affair in time excited a strong suspicion that Dreyfus had been used as a scapegoat for some one higher up and had been unjustly condemned, the fact of his being a Jew being used to excite prejudice against him. Many eminent literary men of France advocated the revision of a sentence which did not appeal to the sense of justice of the best element of France. It was declared that military secrets continued to leak out after Dreyfus’s arrest, and that the handwriting of the letter found was closely similar to that of Count Ferdinand Esterhazy, an officer in the French army, of noble Hungarian descent. This matter was so ventilated that some action became necessary and Esterhazy was tried secretly by court-martial, the trial ending in acquittal. At this juncture, Emile Zola, the celebrated novelist, stepped into the fray as a defender of Dreyfus, writing a notable letter to President Favre, in which he accused the members of the court-martial of acquitting Esterhazy under order of their chiefs, who would not admit that a military court of France could possibly make a mistake. This letter led to the arrest and trial of Zola and of the editor who published it. Their trials were conducted in a secret manner and they were found guilty and sentenced to a heavy fine and a year’s imprisonment. Zola escaped imprisonment by absenting himself from France.