His mission of the moment was to attack the ministry upon their foreign policy, and he did so with exceeding skill, wit, irony, and precision. His eloquence was true eloquence, and was not indebted in any way to trickery, artifice, or over-ornament. He spoke with fire, force, and courage, but his tranquillity never gave way for a moment. His speech was brilliant and serene, in utter contrast to the turbulent and florid declamation which had preceded him. There was great and prolonged applause when he had closed with a peroration stately and persuasive; and when Emile Ollivier rose to reply, that optimistic statesman was plainly disturbed and at a loss.
Sabran resumed his seat without raising his eyes to where the Countess von Szalras sat. She remained there during the speech of the minister, which was a lame and laboured one, for he had been pierced between the joints of his armour. Then she rose and went away with her escort.
'What do you think of S. Louis?' said he, jestingly.
'I think he is very eloquent and very convincing, but I do not think he is at all like a Frenchman.'
'Well, he is a Breton bretonnant' rejoined the ambassador. 'They are always more in earnest and more patrician.'
'If he be sincere, if he be only sincere,' she thought: that doubt pursued her. She had a vague sense that it was all only a magnificent comedy after all. Could apathy and irony change all so suddenly to conviction and devotion? Could the scoffer become so immediately the devotee? Could he care, really care, for those faiths of throne and altar which he defended with so much eloquence, so much earnestness? And yet, why not? These faiths were inherited things with him; their altars must have been always an instinct with him; for their sake his fathers had lived and died. What great wonder, then, that they should have been awakened in him after a torpor which had been but the outcome of those drugs with which the world is always so ready to lay asleep the soul?
They had now got out into the corridors, and as they turned the corner of one, they came straight upon Sabran.
'I congratulate you,' said Wanda, as she stretched her hand out to him with a smile.
As he took it and bowed over it he grew very pale.
'I have obeyed you,' he murmured, 'with less success than I could desire.'