. Chamberlain's venomous tongue in
painful reverie over a glorious but dead moment, and a tragically
wrecked and superb career.

[Sidenote: Crocodile tears.]

There was a painful pause, and then came, however, an antidote. It was
not in the Irish Nationalist party--it was not in even his own
colleagues in the small band of Parnell's supporters, that Mr. Redmond's
observation found a responsive echo. A tempest of cheers broke forth
from the Tory Benches--from the backers of the _Times_ and the
supporters of Piggott; and to add to the painful and almost hideous
irony of the situation, Mr. Chamberlain made unctuous profession of
sympathy with the vindication of Parnell's memory. To those who know
that of all the fierce animosities and contempts of Parnell, Mr.
Chamberlain's was perhaps the fiercest--to those who remember that
strange and almost awful scene when Mr. Parnell--in one of those
outbursts of concentrated rage which it was almost appalling to
witness--turned and rent Mr. Chamberlain as first false to his
colleagues and then false to Parnell himself--to those who remembered
that deadly pallor that made even more ghastly the ordinarily pale cheek
of Mr. Chamberlain beneath this withering attack--to those, I say, who
remembered all this, nothing could be more grotesque than Mr.
Chamberlain shedding a pious tear over Parnell's grave.

[Sidenote: Mr. Gladstone and Parnell.]

The situation passed off, but in many breasts it had left its sadness
and its sting behind. And then it was that once more the Old Man
brought back the House to the temper from which it had been carried by
the malignities of Mr. Chamberlain. Very pale, very calm, and, at the
same time, with evident though sternly repressed emotion--even in the
very height and ecstasy of Parliamentary passion there is a splendid
composure and self-command about Mr. Gladstone that conveys an
overwhelming sense of the extraordinary masculinity and strength of his
nature--very pale, and very calm, Mr. Gladstone stood up. Speaking in
low and touching tones he asked to make an explanation, because he
feared that some observations of his might have given pain to gentlemen
who were deeply attached to the memory of Mr. Parnell. Then he stated
that while he had formed an opinion, which might be right or wrong, with
regard to Mr. Parnell before his imprisonment in Kilmainham, he had
always believed, after his release, that Mr. Parnell was working
honestly for the good o