e, am I obliged to
pay it? Everybody is writing my name! How is any fellow to stand that
kind of thing? Do you think Melmotte's all right?' Nidderdale said
that he did think so. 'I wish he wouldn't go and write my name then.
That's a sort of thing that a man should be left to do for himself. I
suppose Vossner is a swindler; but, by Jove, I know a worse than
Vossner.' With that he turned on his heels and went into the
smoking-room. And, after he was gone, there was silence at the table,
for it was known that Lord Nidderdale was to marry Melmotte's
daughter.

In the meantime a scene of a different kind was going on in the House
of Commons. Melmotte had been seated on one of the back Conservative
benches, and there he remained for a considerable time unnoticed and
forgotten. The little emotion that had attended his entrance had
passed away, and Melmotte was now no more than any one else. At first
he had taken his hat off, but, as soon as he observed that the
majority of members were covered, he put it on again. Then he sat
motionless for an hour, looking round him and wondering. He had never
hitherto been even in the gallery of the House. The place was very
much smaller than he had thought, and much less tremendous. The
Speaker did not strike him with the awe which he had expected, and it
seemed to him that they who spoke were talking much like other people
in other places. For the first hour he hardly caught the meaning of a
sentence that was said, nor did he try to do so. One man got up very
quickly after another, some of them barely rising on their legs to say
the few words that they uttered. It seemed to him to be a very
commonplace affair,--not half so awful as those festive occasions on
which he had occasionally been called upon to propose a toast or to
return thanks. Then suddenly the manner of the thing was changed, and
one gentleman made a long speech. Melmotte by this time, weary of
observing, had begun to listen, and words which were familiar to him
reached his ears. The gentleman was proposing some little addition to
a commercial treaty and was expounding in very strong language the
ruinous injustice to which England was exposed by being tempted to use
gloves made in a country in which no income tax was levied. Melmotte
listened to his eloquence caring nothing about gloves, and very little
about England's ruin. But in the course of the debate which followed,
a question arose about the value of money, of exchan