"Nay, I am vanquished—I yield—I throw up the partie—I see clearly that I know nothing about the matter. What I conceived to be national barbarisms, you evidently cling to as national privileges. Allons! ... je me rends!"
"We have not given any judgment, however," said I. "But perhaps you are more tired than beaten?—you only want a little repose, and you will then be ready to start anew."
"Non! absolument non!—but I will willingly change sides, and tell you how greatly I admire England...."
The conversation then started off in another direction, and ceased not till the number of parties who passed us in making their exit roused us at length to the necessity of leaving our flowery retreat, and making ours also.
LETTER LXVII.
Chamber of Deputies.—Punishment of Journalists.—Institute for the Encouragement of Industry.—Men of Genius.
Of all the ladies in the world, the English, I believe, are the most anxious to enter a representative chamber. The reason for this is sufficiently obvious,—they are the only ones who are denied this privilege in their own country; though I believe that they are in general rather disposed to consider this exclusion as a compliment, inasmuch as it evidently manifests something like a fear that their conversation might be found sufficiently attractive to draw the Solons and Lycurguses from their duty.
But however well they may be disposed to submit to the privation at home, it is a certain fact that Englishwomen dearly love to find themselves in a legislative assembly abroad. There certainly is something more than commonly exciting in the interest inspired by seeing the moral strength of a great people collected together, and in the act of exerting their judgment and their power for the well-being and safety of millions. I suspect, however, that the sublimity of the spectacle would be considerably lessened by a too great familiarity with it; and that if, instead of being occasionally hoisted outside a lantern to catch an uncertain sight and a broken sound of what was passing within the temple, we were in the constant habit of being ushered into so commodious a tribune as we occupied yesterday at the Chamber of Deputies, we might soon cease to experience the sort of reverence with which we looked down from thence upon the collected wisdom of France.
Nothing can be more agreeable than the arrangement of this chamber for spectators. The galleries command the whole of it perfectly; and the orator of the hour, if he can be heard by any one, cannot fail of being heard by those who occupy them. Another peculiar advantage for strangers is, that the position of every member is so distinctly marked, that you have the satisfaction of knowing at a glance where to find the brawling republican, the melancholy legitimatist, and the active doctrinaire. The ministers, too, are as much distinguished by their place in the Chamber as in the Red Book, (or whatever may be the distinctive symbol of that important record here,) and by giving a franc at the entrance, for a sort of map that they call a "Table figurative" of the Chamber, you know the name and constituency of every member present.