o four months' imprisonment, but the sentence was appealed against and
annulled on a technical ground, and the honorable member was ultimately
acquitted by the Cour d'Assizes of Angers.

The parliamentary _debut_ of M. Rollin took place in 1842. His first
speech was delivered on the subject of the secret-service money. The
elocution was easy and flowing, the manner oratorical, the style
somewhat turgid and bombastic. But in the course of the session M.
Rollin improved, and his discourse on the modification of the criminal
law, on other legal subjects, and on railways, were more sober specimens
of style. In 1843 and 1844 M. Rollin frequently spoke; but though his
speeches were a good deal talked of outside the walls of the chamber,
they produced little effect within it. Nevertheless, it was plain to
every candid observer that he possessed many of the requisites of the
orator--a good voice, a copious flow of words, considerable energy and
enthusiasm, a sanguine temperament and jovial and generous disposition.
In the sessions of 1845-46, M. Rollin took a still more prominent part.
His purse, his house in the Rue Tournon, his counsels and advice, were
all placed at the service of the men of the movement, and by the
beginning of 1847 he seemed to be acknowledged by the extreme party as
its most conspicuous and popular member. Such, indeed, was his position
when the electoral reform banquets, on a large scale, began to take
place in the autumn of 1847. These banquets, promoted and forwarded by
the principal members of the opposition to serve the cause of electoral
reform, were looked on by M. Rollin and his friends in another light.
While Odillon Barrot, Duvergier d'Hauranne, and others, sought by means
of them to produce an enlarged constituency, the member for Sarthe
looked not merely to functional, but to organic reform--not merely to an
enlargement of the constituency, but to a change in the form of the
government. The desire of Barrot was _a la verite, a la sincerite des
institutions conquises en Julliet 1830_; whereas the desire of Rollin
was, _a l'amelioration des classes laborieuses_: the one was willing to
go on with the dynasty of Louis Philippe and the Constitution of July
improved by diffusion and extension of the franchise, the other looked
to a democratic and social republic. The result is now known. It is not
here our purpose to go over the events of the Revolution of February,
1848, but we may be permitted to o