d bade us should not be broken. I heard
afterwards that as I sprang forward the police laughed--they must have
thought me a fool to face the rush of the charging men; but I knew his
friends would never trample me down, and as the crowd stopped the
laugh died out, and they drew back and left me my own way.

Sullenly the men drew back, mastering themselves with effort, reining
in their wrath, still for his sake. Ah! had I known what was going on
inside, would I have kept his trust unbroken! and, as many a man said
to me afterwards in northern towns, "Oh! if you had let us go we would
have carried him into the House up to the Speaker's chair." We heard a
crash inside, and listened, and there was sound of breaking glass and
splintering wood, and in a few minutes a messenger came to me: "He is
in Palace Yard." And we went thither and saw him standing, still and
white, face set like marble, coat torn, motionless, as though carved
in stone, facing the members' door. Now we know the whole shameful
story: how as that one man stood alone, on his way to claim his right,
alone so that he could do no violence, fourteen men, said the Central
News, police and ushers, flung themselves upon him, pushed and pulled
him down the stairs, smashing in their violence the glass and wood of
the passage door; how he struck no blow, but used only his great
strength in passive resistance--" Of all I have ever seen, I never saw
one man struggle with ten like that," said one of the chiefs, angrily
disdainful of the wrong he was forced to do--till they flung him out
into Palace Yard. An eye-witness thus reported the scene in the Press:
"The strong, broad, heavy, powerful frame of Mr. Bradlaugh was hard to
move, with its every nerve and muscle strained to resist the coercion.
Bending and straining against the overpowering numbers, he held every
inch with surprising tenacity, and only surrendered it after almost
superhuman exertions to retain it. The sight--little of it as was seen
from the outside--soon became sickening. The overborne man appeared
almost at his last gasp. The face, in spite of the warmth of the
struggle, had an ominous pallor. The limbs barely sustained him....
The Trafalgar Square phrase that this man might be broken but not bent
occurred to minds apprehensive at the present appearance of him."

They flung him out, and swift, short words were there interchanged. "I
nearly did wrong at the door," he said afterwards, "I was very angry.