The House was filled with fog, and
there is an H.B. which represents him gesticulating in the obscurity and
the solitude.'
'He,' said Lord Granville, 'put his speech on the Reform Bill at the
top.'
'The speech,' I said, 'at the end of which he knelt to implore the Peers
to pass the bill, and found it difficult to rise.'
[Footnote 1: Barthelemy de St-Hilaire is now Thiers' private secretary
and right hand.--ED.]
_Tuesday, April_ 14.--Z., Sumner, Lord Granville, Tocqueville, M.
Circourt, St.-Hilaire, and Corcelle breakfasted with us.
The conversation took the same turn as yesterday.
'May I venture,' said Lord Granville to Z., 'to ask whom of your
opponents you feared the most?'
'Beyond all comparison,' answered Z., 'Thiers.'
'Was not D.' I asked, 'very formidable?'
'Certainly,' said Z. 'But he had not the wit, or the _entrainement_ of
Thiers. His sentences were like his action. He had only one gesture,
raising and sinking his right arm, and every time that right arm fell, it
accompanied a sentence adding a link to a chain of argument, massive and
well tempered, without a particle of dross, which coiled round his
adversary like a boa constrictor.
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