"Ahaaaaaa!" replied the assembly.
The last five minutes were devoted to the events in Cadiz, and that was to say that it was all the fault of the government.
It seems logical to report that the orator was removed from there in a cage and taken to a mad-house. Nothing of the sort happened, however: the minister replied in all formality, and combated his quotations and theories with other quotations and other theories. At that period all addresses began with Adam and no one was surprised at it.
Next, coming to the order of the day, it was the turn of tariff reform, and Mendoza was granted the floor. He, having spread out on his desk his earthquake of notes, coughing three or four times, lifting up his hands an equal number, began his great oration.
His voice was well modulated, clear, and mellow; his tone grave and high-sounding; his gestures noble and refined. Neither Demosthenes, nor Cicero, nor Mirabeau were blessed with such an effective presence and such an elegant round of attitudes as our friend Brutandor.
But the trouble was that the ideas that proceeded from his mouth did not correspond in the least with such attitudes. That wrathful gesture, that lowering and raising of the voice, and those short but quick steps in front of his desk, were very appropriate to accompany the celebrated "Tell your master that only by the force of bayonets will we be taken from this spot," or the Quousque tandem Catilina; but for saying that the annual consumption of cotton in England in 1767 was 4,000,000 pounds, and that in 1867 it was more than 1,400,000,000 pounds; that the number of workmen engaged there in the manufacture of cotton is 500,000, and 4,000,000 the persons whose living depends on this industry; that the value of the paper manufactured in 1835 was 80,000,000 pounds and in 1860 exceeded 223,000,000; that the manufactories of the said product at the present time numbered 394; that in France its production exceeded 25,000,000 kilograms, etc.,—they did not seem so appropriate. His whole discourse was reduced to this: quantities, dates, facts. The deputies, with more or less dissimulation, began to desert the salon, one after the other.
"This orator is an air-pump," said one reporter. "At this rate there will soon be a perfect vacuum."
The jokes and flings in the press-gallery became general. Miguel, who knew what he had to expect from his friend's genius, listened with disgust to their raillery of him: he was anxious, and somewhat inclined to cut short their jests peremptorily; but, as in that tribunal of Liberty, comment on the speeches was traditional, he did his best to restrain himself. The best thing that occurred to him, in order to avoid being compromised, was to make a hurried visit home and find out how his wife was. When he returned, the orator was still speaking.
"Now, Congress is about to see the most curious thing of all," said the worthy Brutandor.
And, on turning round to gather up from his desk the papers on which it was written, he showed the seat of his trousers! But no one noticed this graceful quid pro quo except Miguel and a shorthand reporter, who could not help laughing.