ion.

At the sight of the stir and agitation which reigned there, our hero
could not help comparing that chamber and the corridors around it to a
great factory.

A host of laborers, in high hats, were going and coming, entering and
bowing, and elbowing each other; their faces bore the imprint of the
deep cares that agitated them. Some were sitting in front of desks and
feverishly writing letters and more letters; from time to time they
would pass their hands over their foreheads and draw a sigh of
weariness, and, perhaps, of pain at finding themselves obliged, on the
altars of the country's interest, to deny a meeting with some
influential elector who did not deserve such treatment.

Others would come out of the chamber of sessions and sit down on a sofa
to think over the speech which they had just heard, or would join some
group of members warmly discussing some question which, owing to a
modesty that did them honor, they had not cared to take part in during
the session.

Others would cluster around the entrance and anxiously wait for some
minister to pass, so as to recommend to his attention some matter of
general interest to his family.

All this reminded Miguel of the bustle, the noise, and the tremendous
activity that he had witnessed in an iron foundry at Vizcaya. There as
well as here men were moving in opposite directions, each one attending
to his task; they were a little less respectably dressed, and their
necks and breasts were somewhat more tanned than was the case with the
representatives of their country; but this was because there was rather
more heat in the foundry than in the _salon de conferencias_. In place
of letters and other documents, the men there were lugging bars of
red-hot iron in their hands, and they passed them on from one to the
other just as the deputies passed on their papers.

It must not be supposed that it was cool in the _salon de conferencias_.
In each one of its four angles there was a great fireplace where were
burning ancient and well-dried logs, which the thoughtful country
provides her representatives lest they should freeze. Besides, there are
furnaces in the cellar which send up columns of hot air through the open
registers; the carpets, the curtains, the ventilators, and the screens
also cause the temperature to be neither cold nor hot beyond endurance.

Unquestionably the system of heating is better understood in the _salon
de conferencias_ than in the foundry at Vi