ls, and these
culminated in 1892 in the death of an amiable and popular Jewish
officer, Captain Armand Mayer, of the Engineers, who fell, pierced
through the lungs by the marquis de Mores. This tragedy, rendered all
the more painful by the discovery that Captain Mayer had chivalrously
fought to shield a friend, aroused a great deal of popular indignation
against the anti-Semites, and for a moment it was believed that the
agitation had been killed with its victim.

Towards the end of 1892, the discovery of the widespread corruption
practised by the Panama Company gave a fresh impulse to anti-Semitism.
The revelations were in a large measure due to the industry of the
_Libre Parole_; and they were all the more welcome to the readers of
that journal since it was discovered that three Jews were implicated in
the scandals, one of whom, baron de Reinach, was uncle and father-in-law
to the hated destroyer of Boulangism. The escape of the other two, Dr
Cornelius Herz and M. Arton, and the difficulties experienced in
obtaining their extradition, deepened the popular conviction that the
authorities were implicated in the scandals, and kept the public eye for
a long time absorbed by the otherwise restricted Jewish aspects of the
scandals. In 1894 the military side of the agitation was revived by the
arrest of a prominent Jewish staff officer, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, on a
charge of treason. From the beginning the hand of the anti-Semite was
flagrant in the new sensation. The first hint of the arrest appeared in
the _Libre Parole_; and before the facts had been officially
communicated to the public that journal was busy with a campaign against
the war minister, based on the apprehension that, in conspiracy with the
_Juiverie_ and his republican colleagues, he might exert himself to
shield the traitor. Anti-Semitic feeling was now thoroughly aroused.
Panama had prepared the people to believe anything; and when it was
announced that a court-martial, sitting in secret, had convicted
Dreyfus, there was a howl of execration against the Jews from one end of
the country to the other, although the alleged crime of the convict and
the evidence by which it was supported were quite unknown. Dreyfus was
degraded and transported for life amid unparalleled scenes of public
excitement.

The Dreyfus Case registers the climax not only of French, but of
European anti-Semitism. It was the most ambitious and most unscrupulous
attempt yet made to prov