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 other.  I address myself to honest men; there are such here.  I address myself to lofty intellects; there are such here.  I address myself to generous souls; there are such here.  You are fathers, sons, and brothers; therefore you are often touched.  He amongst you who has this morning watched the awaking of his little child is a good man.  Hearts are all alike.  Humanity is nothing but a heart.  Between those who oppress and those who are oppressed there is but a difference of place.  Your feet tread on the heads of men.  The fault is not yours; it is that of the social Babel.  The building is faulty, and out of the perpendicular.  One floor bears down the other.  Listen, and I will tell you what to do.  Oh! as you are powerful, be brotherly; as you are great, be tender.  If you only knew what I have seen!  Alas, what gloom is there beneath!  The people are in a dungeon.  How many are condemned who are innocent!  No daylight, no air, no virtue!  They are without hope, and yet—­there is the danger—­they expect something.  Realize all this misery.  There are beings who live in death.  There are little girls who at twelve begin by prostitution, and who end in old age at twenty.  As to the severities of the criminal code, they are fearful.  I speak somewhat at random, and do not pick my words.  I say everything that comes into my head.  No later than yesterday I who stand here saw a man lying in chains, naked, with stones piled on his chest, expire in torture.  Do you know of these things?  No.  If you knew what goes on, you would not dare to be happy.  Who of you have been to Newcastle-upon-Tyne?  There, in the mines, are men who chew coals to fill their stomachs and deceive hunger.  Look here! in Lancashire, Ribblechester has sunk, by poverty,