M. Paul de Cassagnac had another struggle with the President
of the Chamber of Deputies, on Tuesday, during the discus- sion on the election of Blanqui for Bordeaux. M. le Royer,. the Minister of Justice, had spoken of the origin of the Im- perial revinte as a crime; whereupon M. Paul de Cassagnac cried out, " Withdraw the word !" and• was told by the,President not to. interrupt. Hereupon, M. Paul de Cassagnac shouted out, "We will not stand being treated as criminals. Withdraw, or you shall not go on !" and the President reminded him that he was not in order in interrupting, whereupon he retorted that that was indifferent to him ("ea, m'est tar). This was strongly commented on by M. Gambetta, who pointed out that it was a declaration that M. Paul de Cassagnac had no respect for the "Standing Orders" of the Cham- ber. M. de Cassagnac was censured, and a half-apology was positively extracted from him, for having defied the rules of the Chamber ; while M. Gambetta, on his side, declared that while he would not have permitted any orator to call the Bonapartist Members " criminals," it was not the same thing to describe the historical act in which the Empire originated, as, in the opinion of the speaker, " a crime." And this distinction was clearly sound, for M. Paul de Cassagnac invented for himself a .highly inferential insult, when he transformed M. le Royer's description of the coup d'etat into a personal insult on all Members who apologise for that act of violence. Roman Catholics might as well torture an ultra-Protestant description of the Mass as a blasphemy, into a personal insult upon themselves as blasphemers. It is, however, satisfactory to see that even M. Paul de Cassagnac can quail,—can for once be reduced to the attitude of apology.
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