f one's discourse. "Don't try
gymnastic feats until you have a firm platform to spring from"--a maxim
which a conceited young man, impatient of results, might have despised,
but which commended itself to an ambitious man who felt that, although a
chance comes to all, it is an important point to be prepared for the
chance when it does come. A plutocrat once asked Horace Vernet to "do
him a little thing in pencil" for his album. Vernet did the little thing
and asked 1,000 francs for it. "But it only took you five minutes to
draw," exclaimed the man of wealth. "Yes, but it took me thirty years to
learn to do it in five minutes," replied Vernet. And so Gambetta, when
someone remarked that he was very lucky in having conquered renown by a
single speech, broke out impetuously, "I was years preparing that
speech--twenty times I wanted to deliver it, but did not feel that I had
it here (touching his head), though it palpitated here (thumping his
breast) as if it would break my heart."

The speech in question was delivered on November 17, 1868, before the
notorious Judge Delesvaux (who has been called the Jeffreys of the
Second Empire), in defence of Louis Charles Delescluze, editor of the
_Reveil_. The _Reveil_ had started a subscription for erecting a
monument to the memory of the Representative Baudin, who was killed at
the _coup-d'etat_ of 1851, and the Government unwisely instituted a
prosecution against the editor. It was late in the afternoon when the
case was called on after a number of others, but the sixth chamber was
crowded with journalists and barristers, as it always was on Fridays,
when Delesvaux--a man with hawk-like features and a flaming
complexion--would sit "tearing up newspaper articles with beak and
talons," as Emile de Girardin said of him. Just before Gambetta rose,
Delesvaux observed, "I suppose you have not much to say; so it will
hardly be worth while to have the gas lighted." "Never mind the gas,
sir, I will throw light enough on this affair," answered Gambetta; and
it was amid the laughter produced by this joke that he began. His genius
found vent that day, and he spoke from first to last without a halt.
Reviewing his client's case, he brought Napoleon III. himself to book,
and recalled the circumstances under which Baudin had died, "defending
that Republican Constitution which President Louis Bonaparte, in
contempt of his oath, had violated." At this, Judge Delesvaux half rose
in his seat and endeav