“Conspiracy of Les Trois Marches”

“Conspiracy of Les Trois Marches” was the right-wing press’s sarcastic name for the Dreyfusards’ regular meals at Les Trois Marches during the Rennes trial. The label implied a secretive political cabal, but the gathering described in the novel was a visible daily routine: allies met to eat, talk, and remain close to the proceedings, while the narrator worried that even the restaurant’s servants might pass information to the authorities.

The Name and Its Occasion

The phrase arose from a pointed geographical coincidence. General Mercier, a prominent opponent of the Dreyfusards, was staying across the road from the restaurant. When the narrator and Edmond learned this, Edmond welcomed the proximity as an opportunity to establish a “permanent bridgehead in the vicinity of the enemy.” He then asked the restaurant’s proprietor, M. Jarlet, to reserve a table for ten at every lunch and dinner for as long as the trial lasted.

The right-wing papers recast that arrangement as the “Conspiracy of Les Trois Marches.” Their label made the group’s proximity to Mercier sound like evidence of conspiracy, even though the reported activity was the repeated occupation of a restaurant table. The contrast between the ominous name and the plain circumstances is central to the expression’s irony: a meal among political allies becomes, through hostile framing, a supposed operation against an enemy.

A Daily Meeting Place

The arrangement became a fixed rhythm. Dreyfusards gathered at Les Trois Marches at noon and seven each day, eating what the narrator describes as the Jarlets’ plain bourgeois fare. The phrase therefore named not a single secret meeting but a recurring social and political rendezvous sustained throughout the trial.

The gathering was neither wholly private nor entirely safe. The narrator chose to leave rather than prolong a meeting with his fellow guests, explaining that every additional minute increased the chance that their association would be discovered. Although M. Charpentier might believe his servants would not act as informants for the Sûreté, the narrator’s experience made him distrustful; Mathieu Dreyfus, Alfred’s brother, added that experience had taught him the same lesson. The tension between a public restaurant and the participants’ need for discretion gives the press’s conspiratorial description a sliver of plausibility while also showing how surveillance made ordinary contact feel exposed.

The People Around the Table

The regulars included the Clemenceau brothers, the socialists Jean Jaurès and René Viviani, the journalists Lacroix and Séverine, and the intellectuals Octave Mirabeau, Gabriel Monod, and Victor Basch. Mathieu Dreyfus also appeared, while Lucie Dreyfus did not: she was staying with a widow elsewhere in town. Fernand Labori, counsel for Zola and Picquart, lodged nearby and often walked uphill in the evenings with Marguerite after consulting his client in the military prison.

These were not an anonymous body of plotters but a named circle of politicians, journalists, intellectuals, and people directly involved in the case. The presence of General Mercier across the road gave the meals their immediate political edge; the different participants and their repeated attendance made the restaurant a point of contact for the wider Dreyfusard camp.

The Label’s Political Meaning

The nickname converted association into accusation. The Dreyfusards’ gathering had a practical explanation—regular meals and proximity to the trial—but a hostile press could present the same facts as a conspiracy. The narrator’s own concern that the meeting might be reported to the authorities reveals the pressure behind that choice of language: the group met openly, yet could not assume that its conversations or movements would remain private.

The expression also reverses the image of a “bridgehead.” Edmond uses it as a joke about dining near Mercier; the newspapers turn the joke into a name for supposed intrigue. In that reversal, the phrase captures a broader struggle over how political activity around the case was to be read: as ordinary solidarity among Dreyfusards, or as a threat requiring suspicion.