Sentence
Dreyfus was unanimously pronounced guilty. He was sentenced to transportation for life to a fortress, preceded by military degradation. Upon hearing this decision, communicated to him by the clerk of the court, Dreyfus, who firmly believed he would be acquitted, was stunned. Taken back to prison, he was seized with despair, and begged for a revolver. Forzinetti, who had not lost faith in his innocence, had great difficulty in calming him. However, the touching letters from his wife made him accept life as a duty he owed to his own family.
The appeal of Dreyfus to the military court of revision — a formality — was rejected on December 31, 1894. The same day the condemned man received a visit from Du Paty de Clam, who had been sent by the minister of war with the mission to declare to Dreyfus that if he would make a confession and reveal the nature of his indiscretions, he might obtain a mitigation of his sentence. Dreyfus answered that he had nothing to confess. He asked only that the investigations might be continued so as to discover the real criminal. Du Paty, somewhat moved, said to him on going out: "If you are innocent, you are the greatest martyr of all time." Dreyfus wrote an account of this interview to the minister. He finished with these words: "Once I am gone, let them go on searching; it is the only favor I ask."
Read more about this topic: Trial And Conviction Of Alfred Dreyfus
Famous quotes containing the word sentence:
“Every writer is necessarily a critic—that is, each sentence is a skeleton accompanied by enormous activity of rejection; and each selection is governed by general principles concerning truth, force, beauty, and so on.... The critic that is in every fabulist is like the iceberg—nine-tenths of him is under water.”
—Thornton Wilder (1897–1975)
“Deep down, no one really believes they have a right to live. But this death sentence generally stays cosily tucked away, hidden beneath the difficulty of living. If that difficulty is removed from time to time, death is suddenly there, unintelligibly.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the world.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)