A few were aware that the
censure had been withdrawn, and all were sufficiently well acquainted
with Fenton's high-spirited temperament to feel that something exciting
was coming.
Fenton was too keenly alive to what he would have called the stage
effect to fail of appreciating to the utmost the striking situation. He
threw up his head with a delicious sense of excitement, the pleasing
consciousness of a vain man who is producing a strong and satisfactory
impression, and who feels in himself the ability to carry through the
thing he has undertaken. With a sort of tingling double consciousness
he felt at once the enthusiasm of injured virtue at last triumphant,
and the mocking scorn of a Mephistopheles who bejuggles dupes too dull
to withstand him. He looked around the meeting, and in a swift instant
noted who of friends or foes were present; and even tried to calculate
in that brief instant what would be the effect upon one and another of
what he was going to say.
"Mr. President," he began, deliberately, "if I may be pardoned a word
of personal explanation, I wish to say that the motion I am about to
make is not presented from personal motives. I might make this motion
as one who has the right, having suffered; but I do make it as one who
believes in justice so strongly that I should still speak had my own
case been that of my worst enemy.
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