ir voices couched in the foolish idiom of public
utterance, disguised beyond any semblance to sane humanity, roaring
and squeaking through the public press. There it stands, this
incomprehensible faded show, a thing left on one side, and now still
and deserted by any interest, its many emptinesses as inexplicable
now as the cruelties of medieval Venice, the theology of old Byzantium.
And they ruled and influenced the lives of nearly a quarter of
mankind, these politicians, their clownish conflicts swayed the
world, made mirth perhaps, made excitement, and permitted--infinite
misery.

I saw these men quickened indeed by the Change, but still wearing
the queer clothing of the old time, the manners and conventions of
the old time; if they had disengaged themselves from the outlook
of the old time they still had to refer back to it constantly as a
common starting-point. My refreshed intelligence was equal to that,
so that I think I did indeed see them. There was Gorrell-Browning,
the Chancellor of the Duchy; I remember him as a big round-faced
man, the essential vanity and foolishness of whose expression, whose
habit of voluminous platitudinous speech, triumphed absurdly once
or twice over the roused spirit within. He struggled with it, he
burlesqued himself, and laughed. Suddenly he said simply, intensely--it
was a moment for every one of clean, clear pain, "I have been a
vain and self-indulgent and presumptuous old man. I am of little
use here. I have given myself to politics and intrigues, and life
is gone from me." Then for a long time he sat still. There was
Carton, the Lord Chancellor, a white-faced man with understanding,
he had a heavy, shaven face that might have stood among the busts
of the Caesars, a slow, elaborating voice, with self-indulgent,
slightly oblique, and triumphant lips, and a momentary, voluntary,
humorous twinkle. "We have to forgive," he said. "We have to
forgive--even ourselves."

These two were at the top corner of the table, so that I saw their
faces well. Madgett, the Home Secretary, a smaller man with wrinkled
eyebrows and a frozen smile on his thin wry mouth, came next to
Carton; he contributed little to the discussion save intelligent
comments, and when the electric lights above glowed out, the shadows
deepened queerly in his eye-sockets and gave him the quizzical
expression of an ironical goblin. Next him was that great peer,
the Earl of Richover, whose self-indulgent indolence had acce