ABSTRACT
M. Ribou essayed to glean some of the popular enthusiasm and came in for the lees of the applause. But it is always so when the principal actor has exhausted the audience; there is little power of demonstration left. Still, M. Ribou, being the most incapable man in France, was always well enough pleased when he was not actually hissed. To cling hard to the portfolio which he knew he would never possess again was the sum of his ambition. The gendarmes with difficulty formed a narrow passage through the dense mass of people from the bridge to the great entrance, and each deputy, as he slowly made his way through this living avenue, became the object of ridicule and abuse, or it might be of encouragement and exhortation. Paris, with all her beauty, was not so beautiful as the ragged caps which were flung into the air or the clapped hands which applauded his progress.
