288 MY BOOKSHELVES 



of that kind, you see, ransacking back numbers of 

 Hansard, intent upon feathering with a plume from the 

 adversaries' wing the shaft he is about to aim at his 

 front ; in other words, to cripple him with a quotation 

 from one of his own speeches. Considering how ugly 

 are the wounds inflicted in this manner, it is astonish- 

 ing how seldom they prove fatal. 



Passing through the last pair of swing doors, you 

 stand in Room C, the only one of these five great 

 apartments which offers promise of reposeful reading. 

 True, dozens of pens are squeaking, for here, as in the 

 other rooms, long writing tables are filled with busy 

 scribblers; but there are spacious corners with easy 

 chairs worthy of their name. In a curtained recess at 

 the end stands the marble effigy of the late Sir Thomas 

 Erskine May, highest of all authorities on Parliamentary 

 procedure, most fitly enshrined as the genius of that 

 assembly to which he devoted his whole life. His 

 grave eye seems to rest on the bookcase opposite; 

 follow its direction and you will find, not works in Sir 

 Thomas's peculiar province, but a fairly varied collec- 

 tion of French literature. Not novels, of course, but 

 much that stirs the imagination as powerfully as any 

 novel. Take the first that comes to hand Mirabeau's 

 Lettres ecrites du donjon de Vincennes. Of all the 

 sorrowful documents that were ever penned, this series 

 is perhaps the most humbling. Sophie de Monnier, it 

 may be remembered, was the wife of one whose 

 hospitality Mirabeau repaid by seducing her. They 

 fled to Switzerland, but Mirabeau was handed over to 



