sentences:  Gradually, from late-November through early-December 1897, a number of prominent people got involved in the fight for retrial.These included the authors Octave Mirbeau (his first article was published three days after Zola) and Anatole France, academic Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, the librarian of the "École normale supérieure" Lucien Herr (who convinced Léon Blum and Jean Jaurès), the authors of "La Revue Blanche", (where Lazare knew the director Thadee Natanson), and the Clemenceau brothers Albert and Georges.Blum tried in late November 1897 to sign, with his friend Maurice Barrès, a petition calling for a retrial, but Barrès refused, broke with Zola and Blum in early-December, and began to popularize the term "intellectuals".