Mr Jean-Marie Le Pen yesterday failed in his attempt to drag French justice into the civil war within his racist, extreme rightwing party, the National Front (FN).
A Paris judge threw out Mr Le Pen's request for an emergency injunction forbidding the rebel faction of the FN from using the party's name, symbol or membership lists.
No one from the Le Pen clan came to hear the verdict, and Mr Le Pen's lawyer slunk away without speaking to journalists. But representatives of his former deputy and rival for the presidency of the FN, Mr Bruno Megret, were exuberant.
"It's a defeat for Mr Le Pen. It's a victory for Mr Megret," Mr Jean-Yves Le Gallou, an FN member of the European Parliament and leader of the Paris regional federation, gushed to reporters outside Courtroom 1 in the Palais de Justice. "We will be able to continue using the name and the flame of the FN."
As Mr Le Gallou spoke, a supporter unfurled a poster with the FN symbol, a red, white and blue flame, for the television cameras.
The state prosecutor, Mr Pierre Dillange, had called the complaint an abuse of the justice system and had urged the court to take its time in judging the matter.
Mr Le Pen will have to pay the legal fees connected with his failed attempt to stop the men he calls "the conspirators" from using the name of the party he founded in 1972.
Worse still, they will be able to call their January 23rd-24th meeting in the southern French town of Marignane a National Front congress.
Mr Megret intends to hold elections for a new president, central committee and politburo and to restore the membership of those expelled by Mr Le Pen.
"If Jean-Marie Le Pen does not come to Marignane, he will be the head of a residual and illegal FN," Mr Megret has said.
But Mr Le Pen this week publicly refused to attend the meeting, calling his opponents "suburban insurgents" and saying he would not "make the pilgrimage to Lilliput".
Using his usual vulgar, macho imagery, Mr Le Pen (70) challenged the skinny university graduates of the Megret faction to "take off their shirts" and compete with him at doing push-ups.
A fine line separates wickedness from farce. Earlier this week Bruno Gollnisch, Mr Le Pen's most faithful lieutenant, said the Megretistes were "dishonest to lay their eggs like the cuckoo bird in other people's nests". They were "usurpers" who were "counterfeiting" the name and symbol of the party.
A survey published by Le Monde shows that 60 per cent of the 102 FN federations throughout France have gone over to Mr Megret, and 141 of 272 FN regional councillors support him. The FN has received 15 per cent of the French vote in recent elections.
The ownership of the FN name will now become the object of a prolonged legal battle, which "Caesar" and "Brutus" (as Mr Le Pen and Mr Megret are known) could both lose.
Should the party schism become formal, both factions are expected to run in European Parliament elections in June.
Also in court yesterday was Mr Jules Borker, the lawyer for the original National Front, a French students' resistance movement against the Nazis founded in 1941.
"We will fight to obtain the ownership of the name in homage to the tens of thousands who fought in its ranks," Mr Borker said. The left-wing weekly Charlie-Hebdo last month filed a patent application for the name, with the intention of restoring it to the second World War group.
