l-known
oratorical powers being thus curtailed, the President was delayed but a
few minutes and then conducted to a carriage and driven about the city,
attended by the honourable trio before mentioned. It is said by those
who were within earshot that the President inquired for his friend the
mayor, when he saw that he was to be deprived of his company. However
that may be, I myself saw our tribune of the people riding by himself
in solitary grandeur in the third carriage."

At the memory of Emmet's discomfiture he interrupted his story to
indulge in one of his silent laughs, an expression of mirth which, to
his listener's excited mind, seemed almost an inhuman exhibition of his
professed detachment from the passions about him. Perhaps, had he seen
the dapper Cobbens and the lethargic Parr escorting the unsuspicious
President to the carriage, and Emmet's expression as he found himself
shoved into the third place in the procession, he might have
appreciated his companion's sense of the ridiculous. But it was the
inward struggle, not the outward aspect, that stirred his emotions.
Emmet's most bitter strictures upon Cobbens and his kind were justified
by this incident, and he imagined the mayor's sensations when he found
himself out-generalled and humiliated. What would Felicity have felt,
had she been present to witness the scene? How it might have affected
her toward her husband, whether it would have aroused her to champion
him the more, or whether it would have moved her to scorn of his
stupidity in allowing himself to be put aside, Leigh could only guess;
but his own instinct was to make common cause with the man that was
wronged.

"And who appointed the committee," he inquired, "if Emmet had nothing
to do with it?"

"Why, they appointed themselves, without any more regard for the mayor
than if he had been a professor in St. George's Hall. Now perhaps you
begin to appreciate why I remarked that this was an occasion of more
than ordinary interest. Can we doubt that word has gone round among
the proletariat that their mayor has been insulted, and can we doubt
that they will be at the opera house in full force to express their
opinion of the committee? You see now my motive in coming. I am like
the man that went to the animal show in the hope of seeing the lion eat
the trainer. In other words, if the people are going to give us a
specimen of the psychology of the mob, I wish to be there to enjoy it.
Such a