On Wednesday, the Palais de Justice in central Paris was invaded by hordes of journalists anxious to report on the testimony of Salah Abdeslam, brother of one of the suicide bombers, and the sole survivor of the attack teams who killed 130 people in Paris on the night of 13 November 2015.
Whatever else you can say about Salah Abdeslam, he certainly attracts a crowd.
There were more people in the Special Criminal Court to hear Abdeslam give evidence on Wednesday than at any stage since this trial opened six months ago. Not even the arrival at the bar of French former president François Hollande provoked as much interest.
There were no empty seats in the press reserve in the main courtroom. The foreign correspondents were back for the first time in months. The TV compound was ablaze with lights and egos, dangerous with microphone booms. The press relay room was standing-room only.
I met colleagues I haven't seen since the opening day, on 8 September last year.
And what was it all about?
Illogical arguments
We got to listen to the illogical arguments of Salah Abdeslam, the only survivor of the November 2015 terror squads, the man who interrupted the first day of this hearing with the shouted claim that he was "a warrior of Allah" who recognised no jurisdiction but the law of God.
The contrast with the previous day's intensely emotional offer by another of the accused, Sofien Ayari, of an honest explanation to the mother of one of the victims, could not have been more striking.
Ayari spoke to an almost empty courtroom. And with a sincerity guaranteed by the fact that he's already sure of spending the next twenty years in a Belgian jail for shooting at police officers during his arrest in 2016.
He testified against himself so that the grieving woman, who reminded Ayari of his own mother, might suffer less. "I can't give her back her daughter," he said. "I believe I owe her an answer. If I was in her place, I wonder if I would have the same courage. I'm not sure."
Salah Abdeslam is clearly not cut from the same material.
Special consideration
He opened his testimony by theatrically wondering if he had anything to say. Then he assured us that he had neither killed nor injured anybody, and that he deserved special consideration.
Because otherwise, he warned the court, there would be nothing to motivate future terrorists, wandering in a crowded place, with a suitcase containing 50 kilos of explosives, to change their minds at the last moment.
"They won't stop," he said, "because they will know they have nothing better to hope for, just prison and humiliation."
Abdeslam may find that French law obeys a different sort of logic, and can not be circumvented in the name of a virtual benefit. Nor does the law distinguish between those who pull the trigger and those who make it possible for the trigger to be pulled.
Salah Abdeslam was frequently incoherent, defending the barbaric beheadings at the centre of so much Islamic State internet propaganda on the basis that the French Republic guillotined criminals until the Mitterrand government in 1981 voted for abolition, "which many French people at the time were against".
He justified the appalling plight of the Yazidi sex slaves in Islamic State captivity, saying that slavery is accepted by Muslims, and is one of the fates reserved for those who fight Islam. Absolution and death are the other possibilities.
His friend Abdelhamid Abaaoud, infamously filmed driving a jeep trailing a dozen dead bodies, was not enjoying a cruel spectacle. He was simply celebrating a military victory. "And that only became known because his phone was stolen"!
'A moral dead end'
Abdeslam assured the court that he was not a danger to society. This from the man who admits that he drove three suicide bombers to the Stade de France, with 80,000 fans inside, on the night of 13 November 2015.
On his adhesion to Islamic State, which happened just two days before the Paris attacks, according to the witness, or perhaps two days after: "I swore allegiance without swearing allegiance," he said, "without even knowing I was doing it."
It was a depressing day.
This man of whom so much was expected turned out to be a minor player in every sense.
He admitted that he felt guilty about living his comfortable life in Belgium while "his brothers" were dying in Syria and Iraq. And he felt worse because he didn't have the courage to join them. Frequently, he wept with frustration.
"It was," he said, "like living in a moral dead end."
The trial continues.
