Étienne Lobstein

Étienne Lobstein is 35 and an artillery captain, a trainee on the General StaffGeneral Staff The body of senior officers that plans and directs an army's operations. since January. Born in Strasbourg, the son of a brewer, he chose France when the city passed to Germany. He studied at the polytechnic school, served in border regiments and has the reputation of being the student who never got a trajectory calculation wrong. His colleagues mistake for arrogance what in him is simply precision.

He rents two rooms in a quiet boarding house near the Invalides, with an iron bed, an oak wardrobe and a shelf of artillery manuals bound in cloth. The landlady says she has never heard him raise his voice or seen him come in after ten at night. He drinks coffee without sugar, polishes his boots himself on Sundays and has the habit of always folding his uniform the same way, in three parts.

He is thin and very upright, with a fine, pale face, short brown hair cropped at the temples and a mustache trimmed with scissors. He wears the dark blue captain's uniform, with gold braid on the sleeves and a velvet collar, and carries his cap in his hands when he enters a room. He speaks slowly, with a light eastern accent, choosing the exact word, and dislikes gestures and being touched.

About the General StaffGeneral Staff The body of senior officers that plans and directs an army's operations., his account is that of a trainee who passes from section to section, sees a bit of everything and for that very reason is viewed with suspicion. He was on duty when the section chief called him to read the copy of the note. He says a real artilleryman would not have written those lines, and explains why with the coldness of someone correcting an arithmetic problem.

Étienne knows an Alsatian, an artilleryman and a trainee who passes through every office is, for the section, the perfect suspect, and that the chief has already chosen the name. When the detective accuses him of selling secrets to the Germans, he recalls that he chose France and asks them not to insult the uniform. It could be the honor of an officer treated as a defendant because of where he was born. It could be someone so controlled that he hides fear even from himself. The detective will have to decide which.