mnity. He reached his destination. Men were standing about in
groups, discussing, gesticulating, exchanging salutations and grasps of
the hand, throwing back their heads, like Chinese shadows, against the
bright background of the windows. There were some who walked alone, with
backs bent, as if crushed by the weight of thoughts that furrowed their
brows. Others whispered in one another's ears, imparting excessively
mysterious information of the utmost importance, putting a finger to
their lips, screwing up their eyes to enjoin secrecy. A provincial
flavor distinguished them all, with differences of inflection, Southern
excitability, the drawling accent of the Centre, Breton sing-song, all
blended in the same idiotic, strutting self-sufficiency; frock-coats
after the style of Landerneau, mountain shoes, and home-spun linen; the
monumental assurance of village clubs, local expressions, provincialisms
abruptly imported into political and administrative language, the limp,
colorless phraseology which invented "the burning questions returning to
the surface," and "individualities without a commission."

To see those worthies, excited or pensive as the case might be, you
would have said that they were the greatest breeders of ideas on earth;
unluckily, on the days when the Chamber was in session they were
transformed, they clung coyly to their benches, as frightened as
school-boys under the master's ferule, laughing obsequiously at the
jests of the man of wit who presided over them, or taking the floor to
put forward the most amazing propositions, or for interruptions of the
sort that make one think that it was not a type simply, but a whole race
that Henri Monnier stigmatized in his immortal sketch. Two or three
orators in the whole Chamber, the rest well skilled in the art of
planting themselves before the fire in a provincial salon, after an
excellent repast at the prefect's table, and saying in a nasal tone:
"The administration, Messieurs," or "The Emperor's government,"--but
incapable of going farther.

On ordinary occasions the good-natured Nabob allowed himself to be
dazzled by those attitudes, that clattering noise as of an empty
spinning-wheel; but to-day he found himself on a level with the others.
As he sat at the centre of the green table, his portfolio before him,
his two elbows firmly planted upon it, reading the report drawn by de
Gery, the members of the committee stared at him in mute amazement.

It was a c