sentences:  At first, the political left did not echo this mobilization of intellectuals—on 19 January 1898 Socialist Deputies distanced themselves from the "two rival bourgeois factions".General Billot, Minister of War, filed a complaint against Zola and Alexandre Perrenx, the manager of "L'Aurore", to be heard at the Assises of the Seine from 7 to 23 February 1898.Defamation of a public authority was liable to trial in the Cour d'Assises, while insults to private figures—such as journalists and intellectuals—uttered by the nationalist and antisemitic press were limited to the civil adversarial system.