Chapter 27

SKETCHES MADE IN THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY.

ODILON BARROT.

Odilon Barrot ascends the tribune step by step and
slowly; he is solemn before being eloquent. Then he
places his right hand on the table of the tribune, throwing
his left hand behind his back, and thus shows himself
sideways to the Assembly in the attitude of an athlete. He is
always in black, well brushed and well buttoned up.

His delivery, which is slow at first, gradually becomes
animated, as do his thoughts. But in becoming animated
his speech becomes hoarse and his thoughts cloudy. Hence
a certain hesitation among his hearers, some being unable
to catch what he says, the others not understanding. All
at once from the cloud darts a flash of lightning and one
is dazzled. The difference between men of this kind and
Mirabeau is that the former have flashes of lightning,
Mirabeau alone has thunder.

MONSIEUR THIERS.

M. Thiers wants to treat men, ideas and revolutionary
events with parliamentary routine. He plays his old game
of constitutional tricks in face of abysms and the dreadful
upheavals of the chimerical and unexpected. He does not
realise that everything has been transformed; he finds a
resemblance between our own times and the time when he
governed, and starts out from this. This resemblance exists
in point of fact, but there is in it a something that is
colossal and monstrous. M. Thiers has no suspicion of this, and
pursues the even tenour of his way. All his life he has
been stroking cats, and coaxing them with all sorts of
cajolling processes and feline ways. To-day he is trying to play
the same game, and does not see that the animals have
grown beyond all measure and that it is wild beasts that
he is keeping about him. A strange sight it is to see this
little man trying to stroke the roaring muzzle of a
revolution with his little hand.

When M. Thiers is interrupted he gets excited, folds and
unfolds his arms, then raises his hands to his mouth, his
nose, his spectacles, shrugs his shoulders, and ends by
clasping the back of his head convulsively with both hands.

I have always entertained towards this celebrated statesman,
this eminent orator, this mediocre writer, this narrow-minded
man, an indefinable sentiment of admiration, aversion
and disdain.

DUFAURE.

M. Dufaure is a barrister of Saintes, and was the leading
lawyer in his town about 1833. This led him to aspire to
legislative honours. M. Dufaure arrived in the Chamber
with a provincial and cold-in-the-nose accent that was very
queer. But he possessed a mind so clear that occasionally
it was almost luminous, and so accurate that occasionally it
was decisive.

With that his