Colonel Foucault

Colonel Foucault is the French military attaché in Berlin who reports to Georges Picquart that an anxious French agent has described a possible German spy serving in the French army. Competent and experienced in dealing with deception, Foucault nevertheless treats the information as a serious lead: he draws out the agent’s fuller account, presents its uncertainties alongside its specifics, and agrees with Picquart to investigate discreetly. His part is brief but consequential, placing a troubling possibility before Picquart while demonstrating the care required to distinguish intelligence from rumor.

Identity and Position

Foucault is introduced in his office at the Ministry of War, where Picquart returns to hear his report. The narration identifies him as the French military attaché in Berlin, a professional accustomed to dealing with liars and fantasists. His appearance is sharply rendered: iron-grey hair, thick and closely cut, sits on his head like a helmet. The description reinforces his seasoned, guarded bearing without making him simply an emblem of suspicion; he is presented as a competent, straightforward officer whose trade requires him to weigh unreliable accounts.

His report has been sent to Raoul le Mouton de Boisdeffre, and Foucault notes that he has been waiting for a response to his letter. He retrieves the file from his desk drawer and turns to the source of the information, Richard Cuers, an agent previously employed by German intelligence in Paris before being turned. Picquart knows of Cuers through Jean Sandherr’s briefing but has never met him. Foucault, by contrast, has dealt with him directly, giving him access to the agent’s condition and account at first hand.

Cuers’s Request for Protection

Foucault recounts that Cuers approached him three weeks earlier in a state of acute fear. Cuers believed the German General Staff might arrest him for treason. He suspected that a friend, Lajoux, had betrayed him for money, though Foucault cannot establish whether that suspicion is true. Cuers wanted assurance that the French would protect him; without it, he threatened to go to his German section chief, Hauptmann Dame, and reveal what he knew about the French.

At first Foucault judged that Cuers knew little and mainly wanted reassurance. He told Picquart that reassurance could be given without cost and urged that the agent be assured nothing would leak from the French side. But Cuers wanted more than a promise: he insisted on meeting someone from the intelligence section in person. Foucault recognized the danger of such a meeting, particularly if Cuers were being followed, and had already raised that objection with him. The insistence made Foucault suspect that Cuers was withholding something important.

To get beyond the request for protection, Foucault used a bottle of absinthe. Cuers liked the drink because it reminded him of a French girl he had once loved, and, as they drank, Foucault gradually elicited the account he had not initially disclosed. The detail gives the interview a practical, personal dimension: information comes not through a formal interrogation alone but through Foucault’s patient effort to establish enough ease for a frightened source to speak.

The Suspected Spy and Foucault’s Report

Cuers’s central claim was that the Germans had a spy in the French army whose identity they did not know. He could not supply a name. Instead, his information consisted of scattered details: the suspected source was said to hold the rank of battalion commander, to be between forty and fifty years old, and to have passed information to Maximilian von Schwartzkoppen for roughly two years. The material concerned mostly artillery and was, in Cuers’s account, generally of poor quality. One recent item was information about a gunnery course at Châlons.

The information had reportedly travelled up the German chain of command to von Schlieffen. According to Foucault’s account of Cuers’s report, von Schlieffen doubted its authenticity, suspecting either a hoax or an agent provocateur, and instructed Schwartzkoppen to have no further dealings with the source. That reaction is significant to the report’s uncertain status: the alleged spy’s activity had attracted attention, but the German response described by Cuers was not confidence in the information. Foucault presents these qualifications along with the potentially alarming claim, rather than disguising the gaps in what the agent can establish.

Discretion and Narrative Significance

Picquart responds by proposing two immediate steps: meet Cuers and debrief him thoroughly, while keeping the matter to themselves in the meantime. Foucault agrees. The exchange establishes him as a cooperative intermediary rather than an officer who claims certainty or tries to force a conclusion. His role is to make the report available, explain how he obtained it, and allow the next inquiry to test it.

The episode also turns on the difference between an intelligence lead and proof. Cuers’s account is vivid enough to demand attention, yet it is nameless, second-hand in parts, and qualified by doubts about the source’s reliability and the usefulness of the material. Foucault’s professional caution helps preserve that distinction. By bringing Picquart the report and supporting a confidential meeting with Cuers, he opens a line of inquiry whose importance lies precisely in its unresolved possibility: a spy may be inside the French army, but the information must be examined before it can identify anyone or establish what has happened.