r that he might go to hell
when he died, and he was the more timorous, the more easily influenced by
certain persons, as he suffered from a horrible, incurable complaint, and
feared that his medical man--a bigoted Romanist--might abandon him to all
the pangs of sudden death if he did not comply with the injunctions of
the Church.

Then there was a friend of many years' standing, a Minister in successive
Cabinets, who feigned that by remaining in office he would be able to
favour the cause, and who, instead of that, did his utmost against it. A
playwright wrote: 'I am heartily with you, but for God's sake don't say
it, for my plays might be hissed.'* Another prominent man started on a
long journey to avoid having to express any opinion. Nearly all the baser
passions of humanity were made manifest in some degree--treachery,
rancour, jealousy, and moral and physical cowardice.

* Apropos of the stage, it is a curious circumstance that
nine-tenths of 'the profession' in France are ardent Dreyfusards.
Nearly every actor and actress and vocalist of note has been
on the same side as M. Zola from the outset.

But, of course, there was another and a brighter side to the picture.
There were men of high intellect and courage who had not hesitated to
state their views and plead for truth and justice, men who, when in
office, had been arbitrarily suspended and removed. There were many who
had risked their futures, many too who, after years of labour, were well
entitled to rest and retirement, yet had come forward with all the ardour
of youth to do battle for great principles and save their country from
the shame of a cruel crime.

Adversity makes one acquainted with strange bedfellows, and M. Zola was
more than once struck by the heterogeneous nature of the Revisionist
army. He found men of such varied political and social views banded
together for the cause. It all helped to remove sundry old-time
prejudices of his.

For instance, he said to me one day: 'I never cared much for the French
Protestants; I regarded them as people of narrow minds, fanatics of a
kind, far less tolerant and human than the great mass of the Catholics.
But they have behaved splendidly in this battle of ours, and shown
themselves to be real men.'

All through the spring M. Zola eagerly followed the inquiry which the
Cour de Cassation was conducting, and when M. Ballot-Beaupre was
appointed reporter to the Court, there came a fresh spell