osals for the issue of lottery stock, which proposals,
it was now said, had only been sanctioned by the Chamber after the most
shameful bargaining and buying of votes. At this point Mege became
extremely violent. Speaking of that mysterious individual Hunter, Baron
Duvillard's recruiter and go-between, he declared that the police had
allowed him to flee from France, much preferring to spend its time in
shadowing Socialist deputies. Then, hammering the tribune with his fist,
he summoned Barroux to give a categorical denial to the charges brought
against him, and to make it absolutely clear that he had never received a
single copper of the two hundred thousand francs specified in Hunter's
list. Forthwith certain members shouted to Mege that he ought to read the
whole list; but when he wished to do so others vociferated that it was
abominable, that such a mendacious and slanderous document ought not to
be accorded a place in the proceedings of the French legislature. Mege
went on still in frantic fashion, figuratively casting Sagnier into the
gutter, and protesting that there was nothing in common between himself
and such a base insulter. But at the same time he demanded that justice
and punishment should be meted out equally to one and all, and that if
indeed there were any bribe-takers among his colleagues, they should be
sent that very night to the prison of Mazas.

Meantime the President, erect at his table, rang and rang his bell
without managing to quell the uproar. He was like a pilot who finds the
tempest too strong for him. Among all the men with purple faces and
barking mouths who were gathered in front of him, the ushers alone
maintained imperturbable gravity. At intervals between the bursts of
shouting, Mege's voice could still be heard. By some sudden transition he
had come to the question of a Collectivist organisation of society such
as he dreamt of, and he contrasted it with the criminal capitalist
society of the present day, which alone, said he, could produce such
scandals. And yielding more and more to his apostolic fervour, declaring
that there could be no salvation apart from Collectivism, he shouted that
the day of triumph would soon dawn. He awaited it with a smile of
confidence. In his opinion, indeed, he merely had to overthrow that
ministry and perhaps another one, and then he himself would at last take
the reins of power in hand, like a reformer who would know how to pacify
the nation. As outside