ed at Adunguen. He gave me a description of
the scene of Dreyfus's public degradation on the Champ de Mars which was
like a chapter of Carlyle's _French Revolution_ at first hand. It was
crammed with detail and so intensely dramatic that it made the scene
live over again. I asked him at last in surprise: "But surely you were
not there?" "No," he explained eagerly, "I was not there, but you know
my method; I have had the scene described by a thousand eye-witnesses,
and at last I have reconstructed it for myself." He told me of the
prospect for the defence and described the man upon whom the burden
would mainly rest--"un veritable geant," he told me with a voice to
rally an army in retreat.

I met Maitre Labori in Court next morning and admired the cool
intrepidity of his defence, though it was only when he came to address
the jury that he gave us a real touch of his quality. I know little of
the French method of judicial procedure, but anything more transparently
hollow than the pretence of justice which was offered to Emile Zola it
would not be easily possible to conceive. Whenever the defending counsel
put a question to any one of the witnesses for the prosecution which
bade fair to touch the marrow of the case, Monsieur Delegorgue consulted
with his colleagues and invariably closed the consultation by saying:
"La question ne sera pas passee." In that case it was Labori's habit to
answer: "I shall have to enter an interpolation," which he did, to
the effect that the progress of the case was arrested for a space of
anything from five minutes to a quarter of an hour, until he had drawn
up his formal protest. Meanwhile the courtyard of the Palais de Justice
was rigorously closed against all who could not establish a right to
entry, but outside the railings a great mob continually surged, and at
such times as they could escape from their scholastic labours an army of
students marched up and down singing: "Conspuez Zola!" to a tune roughly
based on the air of "La Donna e mobile." Evening after evening Zola
and his defenders had to escape from the court under the shelter of
a cavalry escort, and on occasion the crowd made an ugly rush in its
effort to get at them.

I was standing near the locked gate in the great courtyard awaiting the
outcoming party, when I witnessed an episode which was very prettily
illustrative of one aspect of the popular mind. In the crowd outside,
close to the railings, stood a big man and a little