ABSTRACT
Pierre Laval was a veteran lawyer. Whatever his hopes might have been, Laval must have known when the preliminary examination was terminated and the trial date set that political necessity had overtaken justice and the search for truth. All this ignited, from time to time during the trial, fiery outbursts from Pierre Laval, inspired in part by his own anger and disgust in the proceedings and in part from his command of the courtroom and his sense of the drama in which he played the central role. Laval had wished to reply to the Attorney General's charge that he had been condemned to death by a tribunal in Marseilles on the charge of having been an intermediary in the sale of a newspaper to the Germans. Laval's stunned disbelief persisted when the lawyers conferred with their client. The words that came most frequently to Laval's lips were "C'est formidable.".
