poken very well in court, and would
there have learned that self-confidence which now failed him so
terribly. It was, however, too late to think of that. He could only
go in and take his seat.

He went in and took his seat, and the chamber seemed to him to be
mysteriously large, as though benches were crowded over benches, and
galleries over galleries. He had been long enough in the House to
have lost the original awe inspired by the Speaker and the clerks of
the House, by the row of Ministers, and by the unequalled importance
of the place. On ordinary occasions he could saunter in and out, and
whisper at his ease to a neighbour. But on this occasion he went
direct to the bench on which he ordinarily sat, and began at once to
rehearse to himself his speech. He had in truth been doing this all
day, in spite of the effort that he had made to rid himself of all
memory of the occasion. He had been collecting the heads of his
speech while Mr. Low had been talking to him, and refreshing his
quotations in the presence of Lord Chiltern and the dumb-bells. He
had taxed his memory and his intellect with various tasks, which,
as he feared, would not adjust themselves one with another. He had
learned the headings of his speech,--so that one heading might follow
the other, and nothing be forgotten. And he had learned verbatim the
words which he intended to utter under each heading,--with a hope
that if any one compact part should be destroyed or injured in its
compactness by treachery of memory, or by the course of the debate,
each other compact part might be there in its entirety, ready for
use;--or at least so many of the compact parts as treachery of
memory and the accidents of the debate might leave to him; so
that his speech might be like a vessel, watertight in its various
compartments, that would float by the buoyancy of its stern and bow,
even though the hold should be waterlogged. But this use of his
composed words, even though he should be able to carry it through,
would not complete his work;--for it would be his duty to answer in
some sort those who had gone before him, and in order to do this he
must be able to insert, without any prearrangement of words or ideas,
little intercalatory parts between those compact masses of argument
with which he had been occupying himself for many laborious hours. As
he looked round upon the House and perceived that everything was dim
before him, that all his original awe of the House h