" Frenchmen
generally have such a wonderful facility of speech, and such a pitiless
logic in discussing a question, that the debates were often very
interesting. The public was interesting too. A great many women of all
classes followed the sittings--several Egerias (not generally in their
first youth) of well-known political men sitting prominently in the
President's box, or in the front row of the journalists' box, following
the discussions with great interest and sending down little slips of
paper to their friends below--members' wives and friends who enjoyed
spending an hour or two listening to the speeches--newspaper
correspondents, literary ladies, diplomatists. It was very difficult to
get places, particularly when some well-known orators were announced to
speak upon an important question. We didn't always know beforehand, and
I remember some dull afternoons with one or two members making long
speeches about purely local matters, which didn't interest any one. We
looked down upon an almost empty hall on those occasions. A great many
of the members had gone out and were talking in the lobbies; those who
remained were talking in groups, writing letters, walking about the
hall, quite unconscious apparently of the speaker at the tribune.
Pages:
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32