Carried away, Monsieur La Rouquette now ran to the library, remembering on the way to glance into the corridor leading to the cloakroom, where he found Monsieur de Combelot, his hands deep in a basin of water, gently rubbing his hands and smiling at their whiteness. Monsieur de Combelot was not going to be hurried. He turned back at once to his hands, rinsing and wiping them slowly with a towel, which he then put back in the drying cabinet with its brass doors. He even found time to step across to the cheval mirror and comb his luxuriant beard with a little pocket comb.
The library was empty. The books were all sound asleep in their oak bunks. Nothing cluttered the dark green baize of the two big tables. The bookstands on the chair arms, a film of dust on each of them, were all neatly tucked back at the same angle. Slamming the door, thus breaking the cloister-like silence, Monsieur La Rouquette cried:
‘There’s never anybody in this place!’
From the library he rushed off through a series of corridors and rooms, to the Distribution Hall, with its floor of Pyrenean marble, where his footsteps resounded as if in a church. Here an usher intimated that a deputy who was a friend of his, Monsieur de la Villardière, was just showing a lady and gentleman round, and he was persistent enough to go in search of him. He rushed to the General Foy Room, a sombre antechamber where four statues, representing Mirabeau, General Foy, Pailly, and Casimir Périer, never fail to elicit awe and admiration in the provincial bourgeoisie, but it was in another room, the Throne Room, that he finally discovered Monsieur de la Villardière, flanked by a corpulent lady and an equally corpulent gentleman, both from Dijon, both lawyers and influential voters of his.
‘You’re wanted!’ cried Monsieur La Rouquette. ‘You won’t be long before you get back to your post, will you?’
‘I’ll be there right away,’ replied the deputy.
But he was not able to get away immediately. Impressed by the sumptuousness of the room, with its gilded mouldings and great panels of mirror, the corpulent gentleman had removed his hat and was not going to let his ‘dear deputy’ escape easily. He wanted to know more about the Delacroix paintings — the seas and rivers of France — and the towering decorative figures: Mediterraneum Mare, Oceanus, Ligeris, Rhenus, Sequana, Rhodanus, Garumna, Araris. These Latin words were too much for him.
‘Ligeris is the Loire,’ said Monsieur de la Villardière.
The Dijon lawyer nodded vigorously. Yes, he understood. But now his good wife was admiring the throne, an armchair raised a little higher than the others on a broad platform, and covered in a loose dust-sheet. She stood well back, wearing a reverential expression and appearing very moved. At last, emboldened, she went up to it. Cautiously, she took hold of the dust cover, raised it slightly, touched the gilded woodwork, and felt the red plush seat.
By now Monsieur La Rouquette was striding through the right wing of the Palace, with its endless corridors and rooms reserved for committees and administrative work. This brought him back to the Hall of the Four Columns, where young deputies gaze dreamily at the statues of Brutus, Solon, and Lycurgus. He darted across the Hall of the Last Steps, and scurried round the semicircular Outer Gallery, which was just like a low cloister; with its gas jets burning day and night, it had the bareness and dimness of a church. Then, quite out of breath, at the head of the little bevy of deputies he had rounded up, he threw open a mahogany door decorated with gilt stars. Behind him came Monsieur de Combelot, his hands white, his beard perfectly combed. Monsieur de la Villardière, who had at last got rid of his two supporters, followed on his heels. They all hurried up the stairs and into the Chamber, where all the deputies were on their feet, almost hysterical, waving their arms, threatening the imperturbable orator on the rostrum, and shouting:
‘Order! Order! Order!’
‘Order! Order! Order!’ cried Monsieur La Rouquette and his friends, even louder, though they did not have the faintest idea what had happened.
There was a terrible din, with deputies stamping their feet and making a thunderous noise with the lids of their desks. Shrill voices rang out like fifes through the medley of other voices, which made a rumbling sound like organ music. Every now and then the shouting seemed to be broken for a moment, and in the occasional gaps in the tumult precise words and phrases could be heard, accompanied by jeers.
‘Outrageous! Intolerable!’
‘Yes, he should withdraw that!’
‘Yes, withdraw!’
But the most persistent cry, which never ceased, but became a rhythmic beat matching the stamping of feet, was: ‘Order! Order! Order!’, shouted until their throats became dry.
The speaker on the rostrum had folded his arms. He was gazing straight ahead, at the infuriated assembly, all those barking faces and brandished fists. Twice, thinking the din would die down for a moment, he opened his mouth to speak, but that only led to a fresh storm, a wave of absolute fury. The Chamber seemed about to implode.
Count de Marsy was on his feet in front of the presidential chair, his hand on the bell push, ringing continuously. It was like the ringing of church bells in the middle of a hurricane. His pale, elongated face remained perfectly calm. He paused for a moment to straighten his shirt cuffs, then began his ringing again. That faint, ironic smile of his, which was like a kind of nervous tic, played on his lips. Whenever the shouting died down, he did no more than try to reason:
‘Messieurs, please…’
At last, however, he managed to establish relative quiet, and said:
‘I call upon the speaker to explain what he said.’
The speaker leaned forward, his hands on the edge of the rostrum, and, defiantly emphasizing every syllable with little jerks of his chin, he repeated what he had said:
‘I said that what happened on 2 December was a crime!’*
He was unable to say another word. The storm began again. One deputy, his face bright red, shouted that he was an assassin. Another yelled an obscenity that made the stenographers grin, but they did not record the remark. There was a cacophony of voices; then one voice did make itself heard. It was the fluted voice of Monsieur La Rouquette:
‘That’s an insult to the Emperor! And an insult to France!’
With a dignified gesture, Count de Marsy sat down again.
‘I call the speaker to order,’ he said.
There ensued a further, lengthy disturbance. This was no longer the sleepy Chamber which five years previously had voted four hundred thousand francs for the christening of the Prince Imperial. On the left, together on one bench, were four deputies applauding their colleague’s speech. So now there were five attacking the Empire. By their persistent opposition, by continuing to speak out against it, by stubbornly withholding their votes, they were beginning to undermine it, and their efforts would gradually stir up the whole country.* A tiny little group, they stood their ground, though they seemed lost in the face of such a crushing majority. To all the threats and brandished fists and noisy pressure of the Chamber, they responded without a hint of dismay, fervent and unwavering in their resistance.
The Chamber itself seemed to have changed. It seemed to have become resonant, it vibrated with excitement. The rostrum had been reintroduced,* in front of the President’s desk, and the chilly marble columns on each side were now warmed by the fiery oratory of speaker after speaker. The light that poured in from above, through the great glazed apse, seemed to set fire here and there to the red velvet of the benches, amid the storm of debates. The monumental presidential desk, with its dark panelling, was now enlivened by Count de Marsy’s sarcasm and irony, his neat frock coat, tightly buttoned round his thin waist, forming a tiny silhouette against the marble bas-relief behind him. Now only the allegorical figures of Public Order and Liberty, between their pairs of columns in the recesses, were calm; they still had the dead faces and vacant eyes of stone divinities. But what, more than anything else, brought a breath of life into the Chamber was the increased numbers of members of the public. Leaning forward and following every
word, they introduced real feeling into the place. The second tier of seats had been restored. The press now had their own benches. And at the very top, level with the cornice with its gilded ornamentation, people were leaning forward to survey the deputies below: the populace had entered the Chamber, and sometimes the deputies would cast anxious glances at them, as if they suddenly thought they could hear the trampling feet of a rioting crowd.
The speaker at the rostrum was still waiting for an opportunity to go on. Unable to be heard because of the continuous mutter of voices, he began:
‘Messieurs, I will now continue…’
Then he stopped, in order to cry, in much louder tones, at last audible over the din:
‘If the Chamber will not let me speak, I will register a formal complaint and leave the rostrum!’
‘Speak then!’ shouted a number of deputies, and one voice, deep and quite hoarse, growled:
‘Have your say, you’ll certainly get a reply!’
All at once, there was complete silence. On the higher benches and in the public gallery, people craned forward to get a glimpse of Rougon, for it was he who had uttered these words. He was on the front bench, his elbows on the marble writing-rest. Bent forward, his huge back was motionless, except for a slight swaying of his shoulders. His face, buried in his huge hands, could not be seen at all. He was listening. His entry into the debate was eagerly awaited, for this was the first time he would speak as Minister Without Portfolio. No doubt he was well aware that all eyes were upon him. Suddenly he looked round and took in the whole Chamber with a single glance. Opposite him, in the section of the public gallery reserved for ministers, he saw Clorinde, in a violet-coloured gown, her elbows on the red velvet of the balustrade. With that imperturbable boldness of hers, she stared at him. For a few seconds they held each other’s gaze, unsmiling, as if they were strangers. Then Rougon turned round again and went on listening, holding his head in his hands.
‘Messieurs, I will continue,’ said the speaker. ‘The Decree of 24 November grants freedoms that are purely illusory. We are still a long way from the principles of 1789, which were so grandly declared to be the foundation of the Empire’s constitution. If the regime continues to arm itself with exceptional laws, if it is still to impose its candidates on the country, if it does not free the press from arbitrary control, in short, if it still holds France at its mercy, whatever apparent concessions it may make are false concessions…’
The President interrupted.
‘I cannot allow the speaker to use such language.’
‘Hear, hear!’ came from the right.
The speaker withdrew his remark, toned down his language, and made an effort to be very moderate, producing fine phrases, beautifully modulated, and very pure in style. Nevertheless, Count de Marsy was implacable. He challenged every expression used. The speaker then went off into lofty argumentation, with vague phrases and long words, in which what he said was so unclear that the President was obliged to let him carry on. Then, all at once, he was back where he had begun.
‘To conclude,’ he cried, ‘my friends and I will not vote for the first paragraph of the address,’ the speaker calmly repeated, ‘unless our amendment is adopted. We cannot associate ourselves with exaggerated expressions of gratitude when our head of state is so concerned with restrictions. Liberty is indivisible; it cannot be chopped into pieces and rationed out, like charity.’
At this, there were loud protests from all over the Chamber.
‘Your liberty would be absolute licence!’
‘Don’t talk about charity when you’re simply begging for cheap popularity!’
‘You would chop heads off!’ cried another.
‘Our amendment’, the speaker continued, as if deaf to these comments, ‘calls for the abrogation of the Law of Public Safety, the freedom of the press, and free elections…’
There was more laughter. One deputy remarked, loudly enough to be heard by his neighbours: ‘You must be dreaming, dear boy, if you think you’ll get any of those things!’ Another produced a derisive quip after every sentence the speaker uttered. Most of the deputies, however, amused themselves by beating an accompaniment to the speaker’s words by knocking their paperknives on the underside of their desks. It was like a roll of side drums, and it drowned the speaker out altogether. Nevertheless, he struggled on to the end. Raising himself to his full height, he bellowed these final words above the tumult:
‘Yes, we are revolutionaries, if by revolutionaries you mean men of progress, determined to win back liberty! Refuse the people liberty, and one day they will take it back themselves!’
With this, he left the rostrum, amid renewed shouting. The deputies were no longer laughing like a gang of schoolboys in a playground. They had risen to their feet and turned to the left of the Chamber. The chant of ‘Order! Order!’ began again. Back in his place, the speaker was still standing, his friends gathered round him. There was much jostling. The majority seemed about to throw themselves at these five. Pale-faced, they stood their ground defiantly. De Marsy rang his bell furiously, seeming quite alarmed. Glancing up at the public gallery, where ladies were beginning to shrink back, he cried:
‘Messieurs, this is outrageous behaviour…’
When silence was at last restored, he continued imperiously, in his sharpest tone:
‘I do not wish to make a second appeal for order. I will simply say that it is outrageous to threaten any speaker in a way that dishonours this Chamber!’
A triple wave of applause welcomed these words by the President. There were cries of ‘Bravo!’ and renewed drumming with paperknives, this time as a mark of approval. The speaker on the left would have replied, but his friends restrained him. The tumult began to die down, breaking into individual conversations.
‘I now call upon His Excellency Monsieur Rougon to speak,’ said the President, in a calmer voice.
A shiver ran through the Chamber, a sigh of satisfied curiosity that gave way to reverential expectation. Round-shouldered, Rougon climbed ponderously on to the rostrum. For a moment he did not look at the Chamber at all. He placed a sheaf of notes in front of him, moved the glass of sugared water back, and drew his hands across the lectern as if taking possession of the little mahogany pulpit. Only then, leaning back against the presidential desk, did he look up. He had not seemed to age at all. He still had the fresh, pinkish complexion of a small-town lawyer, with his square forehead, large, shapely nose, and smooth, elongated cheeks. The only hint of age was his grizzled, bristly hair, which was beginning to thin at the temples, making his ears seem even bigger. With half-closed eyes he cast a glance at the assembly, which was still waiting. For a moment he seemed to be looking for someone. Then his eyes lit once more on Clorinde’s as, all attention, she leaned forward. Then he began, in his slow, heavy voice.
‘We too are revolutionaries, if by that word you mean men of progress, men resolved to restore to this country, one by one, all the essential freedoms…’
‘Hear, hear!’
‘Yes, Messieurs! What regime better than the Empire ever brought into being the type of liberal reforms you have heard outlined? I do not propose to reply in detail to the speech of the honourable member who preceded me. I will simply show that the genius and the generous heart of the Emperor have anticipated every demand made by his most rabid opponents. Yes, Messieurs, the Emperor himself, of his own accord, is handing back to the nation the very powers with which it invested him on a day of grave danger to our whole community. It is magnificent to behold, rarely seen in history! Of course, we understand the resentment this has provoked in some quarters. Some people have been reduced to questioning the purpose of the proposals and the degree of liberty to be restored… You have understood the great act of 24 November. In the first paragraph of the address it was your desire to indicate to His Majesty your profound gratitude for his magnanimity and for his confidence in the wisdom of the legislative body. To adopt the amendment proposed would be a gratuitous insult.
I would even call it an evil act. Messieurs, consult your consciences and ask yourselves if you feel free or not. The freedom we enjoy today is unrestricted, I myself am the guarantor of that…’
He was interrupted by prolonged applause. He had gradually moved to the front of the rostrum. Now, leaning forward, his right arm extended, he raised his voice, and it rang out with extraordinary power. Behind him de Marsy lolled back in the presidential chair, listening, wearing the half-smile of a connoisseur of masterly performances. All round the Chamber, which was still reverberating with the applause, deputies leaned forward, whispering in astonishment and wonder. Clorinde’s arms hung limp on the plush-covered balustrade in front of her. She was transfixed.
Rougon continued:
‘Today, the hour we have all been waiting for so impatiently has finally arrived. There is no longer any danger in transforming a prosperous France into a free France. The forces of anarchy are no more. The sovereign’s tireless efforts, and the indomitable will of the people, have consigned to oblivion those terrible days of chaos and confusion. Freedom became feasible the moment that faction which refused to recognize the essential foundations of an ordered society was overcome. This is why the Emperor has considered it possible to withdraw his powerful hand and reject, as an unnecessary burden, any excessive prerogative of power. He now regards his rule to be so indisputable that none can question it. And he has not shrunk from the idea of putting complete trust in the future. He will persist with his work of liberation, restoring freedoms one by one, in stages which, in his wisdom, he will determine. From now on, it is this programme of continuous advancement that it will be our task to defend in this Chamber…’