The effect of this speech, as the orator, pale, exhausted, shattered, unstrung, with nerves like the torn cordage of a ship that has outridden the tempest, descended from the tribune, baffles all description. Fearful of its influence, the Minister of Foreign Affairs at once arose, and in order to divert the attention of the Chamber asked leave to lay before it the late dispatches from the seat of war, setting forth the glorious triumphs of the French arms in Algeria. This intelligence, which, at any other time, would have been received with rapturous enthusiasm, was listened to under the influence of a counterirritant already at work, with comparative calmness, and its only effect was to cause a postponement of the vote on the laborers' bill upon the plea of the lateness of the hour, although not without strenuous opposition from the extreme right. The rejoicing of the galleries at the triumph of their champion and their fierce applause knew no bounds at the close of the sitting, and their idol escaped being borne in his chair to his lodgings only by gliding through a private exit from the hall to the first carriage he could find.
"What think you?" cried Beauchamp, triumphantly, to the Ministerial Secretary, as they were pressed together for an instant by the excited throng on the steps as they left the hall.
"Think, Monsieur!" was the bitter rejoinder of the Secretary, whose agitation completely overcame his habitual and constitutional self-possession, "I think Paris is on the eve of another Reign of Terror!"
Beauchamp laughed, and the friends were drawn apart by the conflicting billows of the crowd.