Then ensued a scene of excitement that baffles description.

The representatives who, the moment before, had been quite calm and collected, and who looked so passive that it seemed that nothing could have aroused them from a condition of profound composure, became suddenly electrified.

A burst of tongues arose simultaneously all over the Assembly.

Several members got up and tried to speak at once, and one of these (I think I see him now), a tall, stout, elderly man with a voice of thunder, and his appearance much accentuated by an enormous bamboo pen which he had thrust behind his ear, entered into an altercation with the proposer of the motion.

I had no president's bell, and if I had had one I am sure I might have rung it in vain, and I thought it best to sit still for a little time, and let the representatives liberate their minds.