Pauline Romazzotti

Pauline Romazzotti is a close companion of Georges Picquart in the closing scenes, where private familiarity sits beside the public consequences of the Dreyfus affair. She has reverted to her maiden name and prefers to be called Madame Romazzotti; later, she accompanies Picquart to the Vienna State Opera on the evening he learns that Georges Clemenceau has appointed him Minister of War.

Identity and Private Life

Pauline stays overnight with Picquart quite often by this point in the story. The narrator connects that changed routine with the girls getting older, while noting that Pauline now styles herself Madame Romazzotti after reverting to her maiden name. People take her for a widow. The account does not explain her domestic circumstances further, but the chosen name and the assumptions it prompts show how she manages the way others read her identity.

Picquart teases her that Madame Romazzotti sounds like a spiritualist on the boulevard Saint-Germain. The joke belongs to an easy familiarity between them: Pauline is present in his private rooms, and he can lightly mock the impression her public name creates. Her frequent stays, rather than any formal description of their bond, establish the closeness conveyed in these passages.

A Private Confidence and a Withheld Reply

One morning, Picquart brings upstairs a note addressed to A. Dreyfus from an address in the rue de Châteaudun. Pauline calls from the bedroom to ask whether anything interesting has arrived. Picquart answers that there is nothing, although he has read the note again. The small exchange makes her presence part of the episode’s private setting, but also marks a limit: he withholds the note’s significance from her.

Later, Picquart writes on the back of a visiting card that he will tell the correspondent when he can meet him. He does not follow through. The episode concerns Picquart’s reluctance to meet Alfred Dreyfus and the criticism that follows; Pauline’s role is not to intervene in the decision, but to be nearby while Picquart keeps the matter to himself.

Vienna and Picquart’s Return to Public Life

On 25 October, while Picquart is in Vienna, he attends the State Opera in white tie and tails with Pauline on his arm. They are there to hear Gustav Mahler conduct Tristan und Isolde, a performance Picquart has anticipated for weeks. Just before the lights dim, an official from the French Embassy appears in the aisle, and a telegram passes along the row from hand to hand until Pauline receives it and gives it to Picquart.

The message, from Georges Clemenceau, announces Picquart’s appointment as Minister of War and orders him to return to Paris immediately. Pauline’s presence carries the news from the public world into their shared evening: she is the person who hands him the telegram at the moment his private anticipation is interrupted by a new political responsibility. The scene closes the account of her with companionship in motion, not with a separate resolution of her own.