My instructions, moreover, were imperative. For the benefit
of M. Zola personally, and for the benefit of the whole Dreyfus cause, I
had orders to deny everything. So I drove to the Press Association
offices, sent up a contradiction of the 'Daily Chronicle's' statement,
and then hurried up Ludgate Hill to the Court, where my name was soon
afterwards called.
I found myself on the second or third jury got together, and that day I
was not empanelled. But on the morrow I was required to do duty; and
between then and the latter part of the week I sat upon four or five
cases--all crimes of violence, and one described in the indictment as
murder. This position was the more unpleasant for me, as I am, by strong
conviction, an adversary of capital punishment. I absolutely deny the
right of society to put any man or any woman to death, whatever be his or
her crime. My proper course then seemed to lie in the direction of a
public statement, which would have created, I suppose, some little
sensation or scandal; but happily the prosecuting counsel in his very
first words abandoned the count of murder for that of manslaughter, and I
was thereby relieved from my predicament.
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