Pink Affair

Christopher Hitchens reviews a new account of the Dreyfus Affair. But, why do we find this (emphasis added) in the middle of his text?

[Alfred Dreyfus] was disgracefully railroaded from the moment in October 1894 that he was summoned to the office of Commandant Armand du Paty de Clam (a name so Clouseau-like that Art Buchwald would have shrunk from inventing it) and tricked into writing a “dictation” that supposedly matched the handwriting on a secret letter recovered from the wastebasket of the German embassy. 

Inspector Clouseau's long-suffering and periodically insane supervisor/commissioner beginning with A Shot in the Dark was an imaginary "Dreyfus - Charles," namesake of another, actual Charles Dreyfus, distant relative of the unfortunate, all-too-real-life Alfred Dreyfus.

I've wondered for some time how Blake Edwards and collaborators came up with "Dreyfus" for the afflicted fictional commissioner. But Hitchens has looped into a separate mystery. And, don't forget, Clouseau always got his man, if not the woman.