remind him of his duty. And then, all at once, with
incomparable maestria, he had recourse to the diversion which he had been
preparing since the previous day. His duty, said he, was a thing which he
never forgot; he discharged it like a faithful soldier of the nation hour
by hour, and with as much vigilance as prudence. He had been accused of
employing the police on he knew not what base spying work in such wise as
to allow the man Hunter to escape. Well, as for that much-slandered
police force, he would tell the Chamber on what work he had really
employed it the day before, and how zealously it had laboured for the
cause of law and order. In the Bois de Boulogne, on the previous
afternoon, it had arrested that terrible scoundrel, the perpetrator of
the crime in the Rue Godot-de-Mauroy, that Anarchist mechanician Salvat,
who for six weeks past had so cunningly contrived to elude capture. The
scoundrel had made a full confession during the evening, and the law
would now take its course with all despatch. Public morality was at last
avenged, Paris might now emerge in safety from its long spell of terror,
Anarchism would be struck down, annihilated. And that was what he,
Monferrand, had done as a Minister for the honour and safety of his
country, whilst villains were vainly seeking to dishonour him by
inscribing his name on a list of infamy, the outcome of the very basest
political intrigues.

The Chamber listened agape and quivering. This story of Salvat's arrest,
which none of the morning papers had reported; the present which
Monferrand seemed to be making them of that terrible Anarchist whom many
had already begun to regard as a myth; the whole _mise-en-scene_ of the
Minister's speech transported the deputies as if they were suddenly
witnessing the finish of a long-interrupted drama. Stirred and flattered,
they prolonged their applause, while Monferrand went on celebrating his
act of energy, how he had saved society, how crime should be punished,
and how he himself would ever prove that he had a strong arm and could
answer for public order. He even won favour with the Conservatives and
Clericals on the Right by separating himself from Barroux, addressing a
few words of sympathy to those Catholics who had "rallied" to the
Republic, and appealing for concord among men of different beliefs in
order that they might fight the common enemy, that fierce, wild socialism
which talked of overthrowing everything!

By the time M