[Ophelia[_7_]]

out once
and for all. By 1970 none of them was left, except Big Brother himself. All
the rest had by that time been exposed as traitors and counter-
revolutionaries. Goldstein had fled and was hiding no one knew where, and
of the others, a few had simply disappeared, while the majority had been
executed after spectacular public trials at which they made confession of
their crimes. Among the last survivors were three men named Jones,
Aaronson, and Rutherford. It must have been in 1965 that these three had
been arrested. As often happened, they had vanished for a year or more, so
that one did not know whether they were alive or dead, and then had
suddenly been brought forth to incriminate themselves in the usual way.
They had confessed to intelligence with the enemy (at that date, too, the
enemy was Eurasia), embezzlement of public funds, the murder of various
trusted Party members, intrigues against the leadership of Big Brother
which had started long before the Revolution happened, and acts of sabotage
causing the death of hundreds of thousands of people. After confessing to
these things they had been pardoned, reinstated in the Party, and given
posts which were in fact sinecures but which sounded important. All three
had written long, abject articles in the Times, analysing the reasons for
their defection and promising to make amends.
Some time after their release Winston had actually seen all three of
them in the Chestnut Tree Cafe. He remembered the sort of terrified
fascination with which he had watched them out of the corner of his eye.
They were men far older than himself, relics of the ancient world, almost
the last great figures left over from the heroic days of the Party. The
glamour of the undergr