The famous lawyer just at that moment came in, wearing a magnificent overcoat trimmed with fur.
This jest has since that time been credited to a politician by his friends, and they would be quite capable of claiming that he wrote the Holy Bible, if they felt like it.
Keen sallies passed from one to another in loud tones, and caused hearty laughter, and stimulated the victim to sharpen his wits so as to reply with some other joke still more piquante. Much talent and still more jollity were wasted in that incommodious gallery.
"Do you know, Juanito, that you are losing your wits?" cried one young man to another.
"What can I do about it, man; for a week ago the chief sent me to the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences?"
From time to time hot disputes came up on subjects most absurd or foreign to the profession of the disputant; for instance, about the method of loading needle-guns or driving carriages.
And they would gabble and get angry until the ushers compelled them to stop, or some opportune joke from a comrade would bring them to their senses.
The President mounted his lofty seat; instantly he was surrounded by a group of deputies, to whom he began with paternal solicitude to offer an abundant supply of caramels.
These caramels, which at that time did not cost the State more than five hundred duros a day, are an institution, the history of which has unfortunately been very much neglected. Nothing more useful can be imagined than to study the vicissitudes through which it has passed, the beneficent influence which these sweetmeats have exercised on the government of our people, and the elements of progress which they have carried with them. Its whole history might be compassed in three small volumes of easy and agreeable reading.
When they were through, or when the President no longer cared to give any more, the deputies went to their seats, and the session was opened. The first person to get the floor was an ancient republican of pale complexion, dull eyes, and a great shock of hair which made him look like the images in our churches. He got up to speak of an insurrection that had been started in Cadiz. The subject was of keen interest, and there was a great curiosity in Congress to hear this gentleman's remarks, as he was supposed to be one of the promoters of the revolution. He began in these words, or to the same effect:—