Zola, Émile

Paris, 1899. [61,5x45,5 cm]. 4 pages. Folded twice. Slightly yellowed and with some light creases. A very well-preserved copy. Zola's text covers 4 of the 6 columns on the front page. Le Cinquième Acte, published in september 1899, was the fourth of altogether seven articles and open letters published by Zola in l’Aurore between 1898 and 1900 in favour of the French Army captain of Jewish and Alsatian descent Alfred Dreyfus, charged with treason in 1894 in a much-publicized affaire. In the article Zola expresses his outrage with the military tribunal in Rennes where Dreyfus, repatriated from his imprisonment on the Devil’s Island, was tried again only to be re-condemned despite clear evidence in favour of his innocence. The anger and disappointment of Zola, who had spent almost a year in exile in London in the aftermath of his 1898 open letter “J’Accuse...!” is quite palpable in the text. The Rennes trial was, says Zola, supposed to be the fifth act of the play that was the Dreyfus affair -- a happy ending where the wronged party is redeemed -- but it turned out to be only the ”fourth act”: ”When, Oh dear God, will there be the Fifth?” Zola did not have to wait for very long for the ”fifth act”, as Dreyfus was pardoned later that same year on the grounds of feeble health. The finale of the affair was however not enacted until 1906, when Dreyfus was formally acquitted and his honour restored, something Zola himself sadly never lived to see.