oing speech was
sitting on the ministers' bench in earnest conversation with the
minister of Public Works, here demanded the floor.

_The President_.--M. de Canalis has already asked for it.

_M. de Canalis_.--Gentlemen, M. de Sallenauve is one of those bold
men who, like myself, are convinced that politics are not
forbidden fruit to any form of intellect, and that in the poet, in
the artist, as well as in the magistrate, the administrator, the
lawyer, the physician, and the property-holder, may be found the
stuff that makes a statesman. In virtue of this community of
opinion, M. de Sallenauve has my entire sympathy, and no one can
be surprised to see me mount this tribune to support the proposal
of the majority of your committee. I cannot, however, agree to
their final conclusion; and the idea of our colleague being
declared, without discussion, dismissed from this Chamber through
the single fact of his absence, prolonged without leave, is
repugnant to my reason and also to my conscience. You are told:
"The absence of M. de Sallenauve is all the more reprehensible
because he is under the odium of a serious accusation." But
suppose this accusation is the very cause of his absence--["Ha!
ha!" from the Centre, and laughter.] Allow me to say, gentlemen,
that I am not, perhaps, quite so artless as Messieurs the laughers
imagine. I have one blessing, at any rate: ignoble interpretations
do not come into my mind; and that M. de Sallenauve, with the
eminent position he has filled in the world of art, should seek to
enter the world of politics by means of a crime, is a supposition
which I cannot admit _a priori_. Around a birth like his two
hideous spiders called slander and intrigue have every facility to
spread their toils; and far from admitting that he has fled before
the accusation that now attacks him, I ask myself whether his
absence does not mean that he is now engaged in collecting the
elements of his defence. [Left: "Very good!" "That's right."
Ironical laughter in the Centre.] Under that supposition--in my
opinion most probable--so far from arraigning him in consequence
of this absence, ought we not rather to consider it as an act of
deference to the Chamber whose deliberations he did not feel
worthy to share until he found himself in a position to confound
his calumniators?

_A Voice_.--He wants leave of absence for ten years, like
Te