ored to stop the speaker, but a positive roar from
the whole crowd in court forced him to sit down. It was a sign of the
approaching political earthquake that Delesvaux should have sat down in
that way, for he was a man of great resolution; but he must have felt
then as if the earth were trembling under him. So Gambetta continued to
speak, denouncing with unimaginable energy the tyrannies and turpitudes
of the reign which had confiscated all the liberties of France, till at
last he concluded with this magnificent peroration, which was rendered
most solemn by the increasing darkness of the court and the intense
attentive silence of the audience: "In every country but this you see
the people commemorate as a holiday the date which brought the reigning
dynasty to the throne. You alone are ashamed of the day which gave you a
blood-stained crown--the December 2d when Baudin died! Well, that day
which you reject, we Republicans will keep holy. It shall be the day of
mourning for our martyrs and the festival of our hopes!"

When Gambetta left the court after this, it was felt by all who had
heard him that he was the coming man of the Republican party; and next
day opposition journals of every shade of opinion, from one end of
France to the other, acclaimed him as a future leader.

Within the next two years the Republican party made such rapid strides
that to regain his prestige the French emperor felt that a glorious war
was necessary. The leader of the moderate reformers, M. Ollivier, was
won over, and was forced upon Prussia. Gambetta and the Republicans felt
that they had every cause for fear when matters had taken this turn.
Relying upon Marshal Leboeuf's assurances that "everything was ready,"
they saw the prospect of a short sensational campaign like that against
Austria in 1859, to be followed by some high-handed stroke of home
policy that would sweep most of them into prison or exile. Gambetta
could not refrain from bitterly upbraiding Ollivier. "You will find that
you have been fooled in all this," he said; "for when the war is over
you will be thrown aside like a squeezed orange." "I think my fate will
be a happier one than yours, unless you mend your manners," answered
Ollivier dryly. Three weeks after this, however, everything was changed.
The imperial armies had been beaten at Woerth and Forbach; the Ollivier
cabinet had fallen amid popular execration (hardly deserved); and
Gambetta, forced by circumstances into a