"Labori va tenter une démarche pour tâcher de rattraper les sept mille et quelques francs que vous avez versés en mon nom"

Autograph letter signed by Emile Zola addressed to Octave Mirbeau, dated in his hand March 4, 1901. Two pages in black ink on a bifolium.
Horizontal fold mark inherent to postal delivery.
Published in his Correspondence, vol. X, p. 242.
Precious letter from Zola to his great supporter Octave Mirbeau, who had paid his fine at the end of his second trial for "J'accuse!".
Now amnestied, the writer attempts - in vain - to recover the sum to reimburse him.
After his historic cry from the heart in l'Aurore, Zola was first condemned by the Seine jury on February 23, 1898 to one year in prison and a three thousand franc fine. The judgment was overturned on appeal, and the case was referred to the Versailles assizes, which retained only three lines out of the eight hundred that make up "J'accuse!" as grounds for accusation. To avoid accepting such a stifling of the debates, Zola's defense decided to default, and the conviction was confirmed on July 18 - Zola left that very evening for London to avoid prison. The tribunal also demanded 7,555 francs from him, which Mirbeau spontaneously decided to pay from his own funds. It was also Octave Mirbeau who prevented the seizure of Zola's furniture, by obtaining from Joseph Reinach the 40,000 francs in damages that Zola had been condemned to pay to the three pseudo-experts in handwriting that he had "defamed" in J'accuse!...
Following the amnesty law that ended judicial proceedings for "all criminal or delictual acts connected to the Dreyfus affair," Zola was acquitted but was not reimbursed. This letter attests to the writer's desire to compensate Mirbeau for his act of generosity: "Labori [his lawyer] will attempt an approach to try to recover the seven thousand and some francs that you paid on my behalf, for the Versailles affair. He simply wishes to have a letter from you, in order to show it and thus be authorized to speak in your name. You certainly do not have down there the receipt that was issued to you. Perhaps you remember its terms. In any case, if we must wait, we will wait, for nothing is urgent after all. The important thing today is only to test the ground, to see if they will return the money to us". However, the prosecutor's office refused his request. Furious, Zola wrote two days later a letter to Labori asking him to give up claiming the slightest cent - he published it in L'Aurore under the title "Let them keep the money": "they torture the text of the law and the State too keeps the money. If the prosecutor's office persists in this interpretation, it will be yet another monstrosity, in the unworthy way they have refused me all justice [...] I do not want to be complicit by accepting anything whatsoever from their amnesty [...]". According to Pierre Michel, these unsuccessful recovery attempts, of which this letter bears witness, "incited Zola to adopt an attitude that emphasizes even more his disinterestedness and that of his 'friend,' who is not named [in the L'Aurore article], probably at Mirbeau's request."
Dreyfus's pardon and the amnesty of his supporters did not satisfy the writer, but nevertheless marked the end of long years of struggle: "I have finished my crushing task, and I am going to rest a little because I am exhausted". Struck down in full glory the following year, he would not be able to witness Captain Dreyfus's rehabilitation.
Beautiful lines from Zola to Mirbeau who gave him the means to continue his fight for justice.