of the Chamber of Peers and
found it just as I had left it seventeen months before, the last time
that I sat there, on February 23, 1848.

Everything was in its place. Profound calmness reigned; the fauteuils
were empty and in order. One might have thought that the Chamber had
adjourned ten minutes previously.

SKETCHES MADE IN THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY.

I. ODILON BARROT.
II. MONSIEUR THIERS.
III. DUFAURE.
IV. CHANGARNIER.
V. LAGRANGE.
VI. PRUDHON.
VII. BLANQUI.
VIII. LAMARTINE.
IX. BOULAY DE LA MEURTHE.
X. DUPIN.

ODILON BARROT.

Odilon Barrot ascends the tribune step by step and slowly; he is solemn
before being eloquent. Then he places his right hand on the table of the
tribune, throwing his left hand behind his back, and thus shows himself
sideways to the Assembly in the attitude of an athlete. He is always in
black, well brushed and well buttoned up.

His delivery, which is slow at first, gradually becomes animated, as do
his thoughts. But in becoming animated his speech becomes hoarse and
his thoughts cloudy. Hence a certain hesitation among his hearers, some
being unable to catch what he says, the others not understanding. All at
once from the cloud darts a flash of lightning and one is dazzled. The
difference between men of this kind and Mirabeau is that the former have
flashes of lightning, Mirabeau alone has thunder.

MONSIEUR THIERS.

M. Thiers wants to treat men, ideas and revolutionary events with
parliamentary routine. He plays his old game of constitutional tricks
in face of abysms and the dreadful upheavals of the chimerical and
unexpected. He does not realise that everything has been transformed; he
finds a resemblance between our own times and the time when he governed,
and starts out from this. This resemblance exists in point of fact, but
there is in it a something that is colossal and monstrous. M. Thiers has
no suspicion of this, and pursues the even tenour of his way. All his
life he has been stroking cats, and coaxing them with all sorts of
cajolling processes and feline ways. To-day he is trying to play the
same game, and does not see that the animals have grown beyond all
measure and that it is wild beasts that he is keeping about him. A
strange sight it is to see this little man trying to stroke the roaring
muzzle of a revolution with his little hand.

When M. Thiers is