The French "Lebel" revolvers are really beautifully made. They were a very advanced design. The grip is poorly shaped, but that does not matter too much because of the light recoil of the 8mm round, which had nothing BUT light recoil going for it. It has a squinch more power than 32 S&W Long, and a couple of squinches less than 32 ACP. Oddly, the French did exactly the same thing with the gun the replaced the Lebel, the Model 1935 automatics. (There were two modestly different types of 1935.) They were both quite decent designs, chambered for the almost equally useless 7.65mm French Long cartridge.
PS - Upon actually looking up the figures on 7.65mm French Long, I found that the standard load has 240 ft-lbs of kinetic energy at the muzzle. This is respectable (it is about what the 158 grain 38 Special +P does) But no one else thought it was a good idea, and the French Army got rid of it as soon as they could afford new pistols. The French police hung on to it longer, but European cops considered 32 ACP an adequate load.
The small size of the round could have made it easy to have a high-capacity magazine without an unduly bulky grip, but the French Army wasn't having any of that, so one of its few advantages was thrown away.
Just to ramble on further, the other odd thing about the 1935 French pistols was their similarity to the Russian 1933 Tokarev. Both were extensively modified Colt 1911 copies, both had "packaged" firing mechanisms, both were chambered for high-velocity .30 caliber rounds...and both were quickly dumped when WWII was over, although the Tokarev soldiered on for decades in China and in the smaller Communist armies. In fact, the Serbs still make it today, and the Chinese may too.
Sorry to go on so long about the 1935 automatics in a thread about the 1892 revolver. The craftsmanship of the 1892 pistol approached artistry...so the French had to stop making it about 1916, and resume only when the war was over. It was just too time consuming for a wartime weapon, and the Spanish could supply lots of cheap automatics and revolvers.