However, it had at
last been understood that silence could be maintained no longer. It was
necessary that the two ministers who were so loudly accused of having
abused their trusts, should prove their innocence, throw full light upon
all they had done; apart from which the Chamber itself could not possibly
remain beneath the charge of wholesale venality.
Then he recounted the whole history of the affair, beginning with the
grant of a concession for the African Lines to Baron Duvillard; and next
passing to the proposals for the issue of lottery stock, which proposals,
it was now said, had only been sanctioned by the Chamber after the most
shameful bargaining and buying of votes. At this point Mege became
extremely violent. Speaking of that mysterious individual Hunter, Baron
Duvillard's recruiter and go-between, he declared that the police had
allowed him to flee from France, much preferring to spend its time in
shadowing Socialist deputies. Then, hammering the tribune with his fist,
he summoned Barroux to give a categorical denial to the charges brought
against him, and to make it absolutely clear that he had never received a
single copper of the two hundred thousand francs specified in Hunter's
list. Forthwith certain members shouted to Mege that he ought to read the
whole list; but when he wished to do so others vociferated that it was
abominable, that such a mendacious and slanderous document ought not to
be accorded a place in the proceedings of the French legislature.
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