ate," said I. I told him shortly what had passed. He
stood at the table, dumb for some instants, looking at me as if he
could not believe what I had said. Then he burst out that we must
at once publish his letter to me; at once, that very afternoon. I
said, "'Tis too late now." "Oh, no," said he, "the _Pall Mall_
will bring it out in a special edition." "Well, but," I persisted,
"we ought really to consider it a little." Reluctantly he yielded,
and we went into the House. Harcourt presently joined us on the
bench, and we told him the news. It was by and by decided that the
letter should be immediately published. Mr. Gladstone thought that
I should at once inform Mr. Parnell of this. There he was at that
moment, pleasant and smiling, in his usual place on the Irish
bench. I went into our lobby, and sent somebody to bring him out.
Out he came, and we took three or four turns in the lobby. I told
him that it was thought right, under the new circumstances, to
send the letter to the press. "Yes," he said amicably, as if it
were no particular concern of his, "I think Mr. Gladstone will be
quite right to do that; it will put him straight with his party."

The debate on the address had meanwhile been running its course. Mr.
Gladstone had made his speech. One of the newspapers afterwards described
the liberals as wearing pre-occupied countenances. "We were pre-occupied
with a vengeance," said Mr. Gladstone, "and even while I was speaking I
could not help thinking to myself, Here am I talking about Portugal and
about Armenia, while every single creature in the House is absorbed in one
thing only, and that is an uncommonly long distance from either Armenia or
Portugal." News of the letter, which had been sent to the reporters about
eight o'clock, swiftly spread. Members hurried to ex-ministers in the
dining-room to ask if the story of the letter were true. The lobbies were
seized by one of those strange and violent fevers to which on such
occasions the House of Commons is liable. Unlike the clamour of the Stock
Exchange or a continental Chamber, there is little noise, but the
perturbation is profound. Men pace the corridors in couples and trios, or
flit from one knot to another, listening to an oracle of the moment
modestly retailing a rumour false on the face of it, or evolving monstrous
hypotheses to explain incredible occurrences. This, however, was no common