nd of all these voices the
echoes of the past. While crossing a corridor she saw a little dark man
gesticulating and crying to the servants:

"You will tell Moussiou Jansoulet that it is I, that I am the Mayor of
Sarlazaccio, that I have been condemned to five months' imprisonment for
him. In God's name, surely that is worth a card for the sitting."

Five months' imprisonment for her son! Why? Very much disturbed, she
arrived at last, her ears singing, at the top of the staircase, where
different inscriptions--"Tribune of the Senate, of the Diplomatic Body,
of the Deputies"--stood above little doors like boxes in a theatre. She
entered, and without seeing anything at first except four or five rows
of seats filled with people, and opposite, very far off, separated from
her by a vast clear space, other galleries similarly filled. She leaned
up against the wall, astonished to be there, exhausted, almost ashamed.
A current of hot air which came to her face, a chatter of rising voices,
drew her towards the slope of the gallery, towards the kind of gulf open
in the middle where her son must be. Oh! how she would like to see him.
So squeezing herself in, and using her elbows, pointed and hard as her
spindle, she glided and slipped between the wall and the seats, taking
no notice of the anger she aroused or the contempt of the well-dressed
women whose lace and fresh toilettes she crushed; for the assembly
was elegant and fashionable. Mme. Jansoulet recognised, by his stiff
shirt-front and aristocratic nose, the marquis who had visited them at
Saint-Romans, who so well suited his name, but he did not look at her.
She was stopped farther progress by the back of a man sitting down,
an enormous back which barred everything and forbade her go farther.
Happily, she could see nearly all the hall from here by leaning forward
a little; and these semi-circular benches filled with deputies, the
green hanging of the walls, the chair at the end, occupied by a bald man
with a severe air, gave her the idea, under the studious and gray light
from the roof, of a class about to begin, with all the chatter and
movement of thoughtless schoolboys.

One thing struck her--the way in which all looks turned to one side,
to the same point of attraction; and as she followed this current
of curiosity which carried away the entire assembly, hall as well as
galleries, she saw that what they were all looking at--was her son.

In the Jansoulet's country th