Lieutenant-Colonel Alleward is arrested and commits suicide in prison, not with a razor like Henry, but with a revolver. One scene in the novel describes the appearance of a veiled lady on the very spot near the Champs Elysées, where the mysterious veiled lady is said to have appeared to Esterhazy three years later and for much the same purpose. The French minister of war, Mercier, was forced to proceed against Dreyfus by the _Libre Patrole_, which published lies about his confession, as _Le Vigilant_ did about Dormelles. The only rational explanation of this remarkable concurrence of events, as they are narrated in the fiction and afterwards occurred in fact, is that the method of conducting the conspiracy against Dreyfus and the possibility of accomplishing it were suggested by Letang’s story, although the conspirators doubtless did not anticipate that the logic of events would render the results of their falsehoods and forgeries as fatal to them as they were to their prototypes in the novel. Every scoundrel is firmly convinced that he can pattern after his precursors in villainy, avoid their mistakes and commit the same crime without incurring the same penalty. That paroxysms of epilepsy, hysterics and various forms of frenzy are contagious and may be easily communicated to nervous persons, who witness them, has been clearly proved. Vicious passions obey the same law of imitation even in a still higher degree than tender emotions and nervous diseases, and more than two centuries ago the illustrious jurisconsult, Samuel Pufendorf, laid down the general principle that he who for the first time commits a crime liable to spread by contagion and to become virulent, should be punished with extreme severity, in order that it may not infect others and create a moral pestilence. The hemp cure is always a harsh cure, especially where there is any doubt as to the offender’s mental soundness; but in view of the increasing frequency with which atrocious and wilful crime shelters itself under the plea of insanity and becomes an object of misdirected sympathy to maudlin sentimentalists, the adoption of radical and rigorous measures in the infliction of punishment were perhaps an experiment well worth trying. Meanwhile, let the psychiater continue his researches, and after we have passed through the present confused and perilous period of transition from gross and brutal mediæval conceptions of justice to refined and humanitarian modern conceptions of justice, we may, in due time, succeed in establishing our penal code and criminal procedure upon foundations that shall be both philosophically sound and practically safe. APPENDIX CONTAINING ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS A TESTIMONIALES ET REASSUMPTUM