The trial of M. Gregori, who shot Major Dreyfus in
the wrist at the Pantheon when the remains of Zola were being transferred thither, was concluded in Paris on Friday week. The jury found him not guilty, and this astonishing verdict was received with cheers. The trial was the occasion for the reappearance of such ghosts of the past as Colonel du Paty de Clam, and the counsel and witnesses for the defence made a preconcerted appeal to the passion of the jury. M. Gregori's counsel, as the Times correspondent remarks, might have pleaded his client's insanity, but he preferred audaciously to revive the dead embers of the Dreyfus afaire. "Be indulgent," he said, " to a man who tried with a pistol to let a little light into the darkness." M. Gregori himself said that his act was" symbolical," and was a protest against the manner in which the Army had been insulted by the friends of Major Dreyfus. In a long speech he made once more assertions which were exposed fully, and one had hoped finally, by the Court of Cassation. M. Rochefort, when asked his opinion, spoke of M. Gregori's act as a crime of passion : " lie fired his pistol as a woman throws vitriol at her lover." And the best one can say is that the jury regarded it, as the Times corre- spondent suggests, as one of those crimes passionnels to which Parisians are characteristically indulgent.
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