y in France against England at this humiliation was tremendous. No
sane man would have then ventured to predict that in a few years the
hands of the two countries would be joined in the clasp of the _Entente
cordiale_.

CHAPTER VIII

THE ADMINISTRATION OF EMILE LOUBET

February, 1899, to February, 1906

The successor of Felix Faure, Emile Loubet, was elected on February 18,
1899, by a good majority over Jules Meline, the candidate of the larger
number of the Moderates or "Progressists" and of the Conservatives.
Loubet was himself a man of Moderate views, but he was thought to favor
a revision of the Dreyfus case. Among the charges of his enemies was
that, as Minister of the Interior in 1892, he had held, but had kept
secret, the famous list of the "Hundred and Four" and had prevented the
seizure of the papers of Baron de Reinach and the arrest of Arton. So
Loubet's return to Paris from Versailles was amid hostile cries of
"Loubet-Panama" and "Vive l'armee!"

On February 23, after the state funeral of President Faure, a detachment
of troops led by General Roget was returning to its barracks in an
outlying quarter of Paris. Suddenly the Nationalist and quondam
Boulangist Paul Deroulede, now chief of the Ligue des Patriotes and
vigorous opponent of parliamentary government, though a Deputy himself,
rushed to General Roget, and, grasping the bridle of his horse, tried to
persuade him to lead his troops to the Elysee, the presidential
residence, and overthrow the Government. Deroulede had expected to
encounter General de Pellieux, a more amenable leader, and one of the
noisy generals at the Zola trial. General Roget, who had been
substituted at the last moment, refused to accede and caused the arrest
of Deroulede, with his fellow Deputy and conspirator Marcel Habert.

Meanwhile the Dreyfus case had been taken out of the hands of the
Criminal Chamber and given to the whole Court. To the dismay of the
anti-Dreyfusites the Court, as a body, annulled, on June 3, the verdict
of the court-martial of 1894, and decided that Dreyfus should appear
before a second military court at Rennes for another trial.

Thus party antagonisms were becoming more and more acute. In addition
Dupuy, the head of the Cabinet, seemed to be spiting the new President.
On the day after the verdict of the Cour de Cassation, at the Auteuil
races, President Loubet was roughly jostled by a band of fashionable
young Royalists and struck with a ca