In his high place sits the President, Abrahamowicz, object of the Opposition’s limitless hatred.  He is sunk back in the depths of his arm-chair, and has his chin down.  He brings the ends of his spread fingers together, in front of his breast, and reflectively taps them together, with the air of one who would like to begin business, but must wait, and be as patient as he can.  It makes you think of Richelieu.  Now and then he swings his head up to the left or to the right and answers something which some one has bent down to say to him.  Then he taps his fingers again.  He looks tired, and maybe a trifle harassed.  He is a gray-haired, long, slender man, with a colourless long face, which, in repose, suggests a death-mask; but when not in repose is tossed and rippled by a turbulent smile which washes this way and that, and is not easy to keep up with—­a pious smile, a holy smile, a saintly smile, a deprecating smile, a beseeching and supplicating smile; and when it is at work the large mouth opens, and the flexible lips crumple, and unfold, and crumple again, and move around in a genial and persuasive and angelic way, and expose large glimpses of the teeth; and that interrupts the sacredness of the smile and gives it momentarily a mixed worldly and political and satanic cast.  It is a most interesting face to watch.  And then the long hands and the body—­they furnish great and frequent help to the face in the business of adding to the force of the statesman’s words.

To change the tense.  At the time of which I have just been speaking the crowds in the galleries were gazing at the stage and the pit with rapt interest and expectancy.  One half of the great fan of desks was in effect empty, vacant; in the other half several hundred members were bunched and jammed together as solidly as the bristles in a brush; and they also were waiting and expecting.  Presently the Chair delivered this utterance: 

‘Dr. Lecher has the floor.’

Then burst out such another wild and frantic and deafening clamour as has not been heard on this planet since the last time the Comanches surprised a white settlement at night.  Yells from the Left, counter-yells from the Right, explosions of yells from all sides at once, and all the air sawed and pawed and clawed and cloven by a writhing confusion of gesturing arms and hands.  Out of the midst of this thunder and turmoil and tempest rose Dr. Lecher, serene and collected, and the providential length of his enabled his head to show out of it.  He began his twelve-hour speech.  At any rate, his lips could be seen to move, and that was evidence.  On high sat the President, imploring order, with his long hands put together as in prayer, and his lips visibly but not hearably speaking.  At intervals he grasped his bell and swung it up and down with vigour, adding its keen clamour to the storm weltering there below.