In the Chamber of Deputies some of the scenes were
very exciting. M. Paul de Cassagnac and M. Mitehell were most violent and furious in their interruptions of the Republican speakers, the former, it is said, having interrupted the speakers no less than 97 times in a single sitting, and the latter having also called down upon himself the formal censure of the Chamber for imputing falsehood to one speaker. When M. Gambctta said that power was at present in " suspicious " hands, M. Paris, the Minister of Public Works, sprang with a threatening air towards the table, and hostile armies of Right and Left dashed forwards. The Home Minister's (M. de Fourtou's) speech was only an elaborate comment on a single text,—" We do not possess your confidence, but you do not possess ours." His greatest mistake was to give the Left an unexpected opportunity of offering a great ovation to M. Thiers, as the true pacificator of the country and liberator of the territory. The end of the debate in the Chamber of Deputies was the carrying by a majority of 205 (363 to 158) an order of the day censuring the new Government as a standing danger to peace and order, in that it had overturned the Administration, just to answer the ends of a coalition of Monarchical parties acting " under clerical inspiration." The Government were also refused money votes for which they asked for the session of 1878.
