Some Christians start the 12 days of Christmas on Christmas Day. Some start the day after. If you are in the former group, 5 January is the last. It’s called Twelfth Night. Three or four years after the premiere of Shakespeare’s play of that name, colleague Ben Jonson was commissioned to produce a masque. Known as The Masque of Blackness, it was first performed at a Twelfth Night celebration on the alternative 6 January 1605 and bears the alternative title The Twelfth Night’s Revells.
On 5 January 1895, the ceremony of degradation of Captain Alfred Dreyfus took place in the Military School in Paris. He had been convicted upon the efforts of amateur handwriting expert Major du Paty de Clam.
Later disgraced, the accuser and devout Catholic would enjoy the ambiguity of a Twelfth Night redemption when he was permitted to join the territorial army not on 5 but 6 January 1913. In due course Du Paty de Clam was wounded and made an officer of the Legion of Honour. He appears to have kept at least one supporter with his death certificate noting “he died for France”.
The accuser’s son also served, being made in the same war a knight of the same order. Three decades later, he vacillated between Petain and de Gaulle before opting for the former and going on to hold the role of Commissioner-General for Jewish Affairs under the Vichy government.
Du Paty de Clam junior was ambivalent. On the one hand he was a fervent believer in the peril of Jewish domination. On the other he was dead cold on German aryanisation. This may explain why he left the post after three months. He was tried after the war ended with one report stating:
The investigation file changed completely in his favour, the investigating judge even accepting that he had played a role of ‘saboteur’ in agreement with the Resistance. On June 19, 1947, his case was dismissed without further action by the Investigation Commission at the High Court of Justice, by a decision of dismissal.
So, du Paty de Clam pere fell from grace because of his role in a false accusation that a Jew was giving secrets to the German enemy, while du Paty de Calm son was redeemed because an accusation that he was giving up Jews to the German ally was met with a case that he was secretly acting for an independent France.
