Alfred Dreyfus—Maître Labori

Alfred Dreyfus—Maître Labori is a relationship forged in the second trial of the case: Labori joined Dreyfus’s defense at Rennes, argued against the army’s handling of the evidence, and returned to court after an assassination attempt. Dreyfus’s greeting on his return gave the alliance a quiet, public expression; Labori’s own words after the shooting made clear what he believed was at stake in continuing the defense.

The Advocate at Rennes

When Dreyfus was brought back to France for trial at Rennes, only four outsiders had been permitted to see him: his wife Lucie, his brother Mathieu, and his two lawyers, Edgar Demange and Labori. Mathieu had brought Labori into the case to sharpen the attack on the army. The arrangement placed Labori not merely beside Dreyfus as counsel but among the very few people allowed access to him during a period of intense public attention and official control.

The scale of that attention was striking. Three hundred journalists had gathered in the region, special telegraph operators were expected to transmit hundreds of thousands of words each day, and the Bourse de Commerce had been equipped with 150 desks for reporters. Against this global spectacle, Dreyfus’s access to his lawyers remained tightly restricted. Labori’s role therefore joined courtroom advocacy to the practical work of representing a defendant whose condition and circumstances were otherwise known largely through the press.

Building the Case Against the Army

Labori’s work belonged to a wider effort to contest the military account of Dreyfus’s guilt. The case turned not only on the accusation but on the handling of documents: Picquart challenged the claim that the handwriting on the bordereau matched Dreyfus’s and raised the use of falsified material in the dossier. The inquiry dismissed those matters as outside its scope. Labori’s presence on Dreyfus’s defense team gave the challenge a place within the renewed legal struggle, even as the military proceedings continued to constrain which questions could be heard.

His involvement also extended beyond the courtroom. With Labori’s help, Picquart drafted an open letter to Prime Minister Henri Brisson after the Minister of War had cited secret documents in the Chamber of Deputies. The letter argued that the two documents dated 1894 could not be applied to Dreyfus and that the document dated 1896 showed signs of forgery. This was Picquart’s intervention, not a statement attributed to Dreyfus or Labori; Labori’s contribution was to help shape a route for the evidence into public and political debate.

The Attack and the Return

During the Rennes trial, a gunman shot Labori. Picquart, who pursued the attacker into nearby woodland, missed the immediate aftermath and learned the details later from Edmond. The bullet was lodged between Labori’s fifth and sixth ribs, millimetres from his spine, and he could not move his leg. Labori grasped Demange’s hand and said, “Old chap, I’m going to die perhaps, but Dreyfus is safe.” The reported words placed the client’s position at the centre of the crisis, even as Labori faced a potentially fatal injury.

Labori survived, but his recovery was incomplete. When he returned to court in the middle of the following week, the bullet remained lodged in the muscles of his shoulder. He entered with his wife Marguerite to loud applause, acknowledged the crowd, and took his place in a large armchair. His left arm was stiff and scarcely movable. Dreyfus stood as he passed and warmly shook his good hand: a brief exchange that made their connection visible without turning it into a speech.

Advocacy and Its Limits

The relationship was defined by commitment within a process that did not guarantee justice. Labori’s return showed his determination to resume the defense despite pain and the risks of the shooting; Dreyfus’s gesture recognized that return in open court. Yet Dreyfus’s release would later come through a pardon, a solution Picquart regarded as technically an admission of guilt. Jean Jaurès had drafted a statement for Dreyfus to issue on leaving prison, insisting that freedom without restored honour meant little and that he would continue seeking reversal of the judicial error. The distinction underscores the limits of what advocacy and release could achieve: Labori could defend Dreyfus, but the demand for vindication remained unresolved.