diate. A cloud had hung over the assembly. It
might have broken into terror; it broke into delight. Mad merriment
seized the whole House. Nothing pleases the great chambers of sovereign
man so much as buffoonery. It is their revenge upon their graver
moments.

The laughter of kings is like the laughter of the gods. There is always
a cruel point in it. The lords set to play. Sneers gave sting to their
laughter. They clapped their hands around the speaker, and insulted him.
A volley of merry exclamations assailed him like bright but wounding
hailstones.

"Bravo, Gwynplaine!"--"Bravo, Laughing Man!"--"Bravo, Snout of the Green
Box!"--"Mask of Tarrinzeau Field!"--"You are going to give us a
performance."--"That's right; talk away!"--"There's a funny
fellow!"--"How the beast does laugh, to be sure!"--"Good-day,
pantaloon!"--"How d'ye do, my lord clown!"--"Go on with your
speech!"--"That fellow a peer of England?"--"Go on!"--"No, no!"--"Yes,
yes!"

The Lord Chancellor was much disturbed.

A deaf peer, James Butler, Duke of Ormond, placing his hand to his ear
like an ear trumpet, asked Charles Beauclerk, Duke of St. Albans,--

"How has he voted?"

"Non-content."

"By heavens!" said Ormond, "I can understand it, with such a face as
his."

Do you think that you can ever recapture a crowd once it has escaped
your grasp? And all assemblies are crowds alike. No, eloquence is a bit;
and if the bit breaks, the audience runs away, and rushes on till it has
thrown the orator. Hearers naturally dislike the speaker, which is a
fact not as clearly understood as it ought to be. Instinctively he pulls
the reins, but that is a useless expedient. However, all orators try it,
as Gwynplaine did.

He looked for a moment at those men who were laughing at him. Then he
cried,--

"So, you insult misery! Silence, Peers of England! Judges, listen to my
pleading! Oh, I conjure you, have pity. Pity for whom? Pity for
yourselves. Who is in danger? Yourselves! Do you not see that you are in
a balance, and that there is in one scale your power, and in the other
your responsibility? It is God who is weighing you. Oh, do not laugh.
Think. The trembling of your consciences is the oscillation of the
balance in which God is weighing your actions. You are not wicked; you
are like other men, neither better nor worse. You believe yourselves to
be gods; but be ill to-morrow, and see your divinity shivering in fever!
We are worth one as much as the ot