to my memory the tent of the acrobats. The cold rhetoric
of that harangue, vibrating with neither truth nor emotion, recalled to
me the patter, learned by heart, of the powdered clown on the stage. The
superb air which the orator assumed under the rain of reproaches and
insults singularly resembled the indifference of the clown to the loud
slaps on his face. Those sonorous phrases, whose echoes had just died
away, sounded as false as a strolling band. The word "liberty" rolled
like the bass-drum, "public interests" and "welfare of the State"
clanged discordantly like the cymbals, and when the comedian spoke of
his "patriotism" I almost heard the _couac_ of a clarionet.

A long uproar woke me from my revery. The speech was finished, and the
orator, having descended from the rostrum, was receiving
congratulations. They were about to vote: the urns were being passed
around, but the result was certain, and the crowd of tribunes was
already dispersing.

As I went across the vestibule I saw an elderly lady dressed in black.
She was dressed like a wealthy bourgeoise and appeared radiant. I
stopped one of the well-groomed little chaps whom one sees trotting
around in the Ministerial corridors. I knew him slightly, and I asked
him who that lady was.

"The mother of the orator," he replied, with official emotion. "She must
be very proud."

Very proud! The old mother who wept so bitterly in the market-place was
not that; and if the mother of his future Excellency had reflected, she
would have regretted--she too--the time when her boy was very small, and
rolled naked on her knee, holding his little foot in his hand.

But, bah! everything is relative, even shame.

[Illustration]

A VOLUNTARY DEATH.

[Illustration: A VOLUNTARY DEATH]

I knew the poet Louis Miraz very well, in the old times in the Latin
Quarter, where we used to take our meals together at a cremerie on the
Rue de Seine, kept by an old Polish woman whom we nicknamed the Princess
Chocolawska, on account of the enormous bowl of creme and chocolate
which she exposed daily in the show-window of her shop. It was possible
to dine there for ten sous, with "two breads," an "ordinaire for thirty
centimes," and a "small coffee."

Some who were very nice spent a sou more for a napkin.

Besides some young men who were destined to become geniuses, the
ordinary guests of the cremerie were some poor compatriots of the
proprietress, who had all to some extent co