The members of the Majority went out by detachments from time to time and took naps upon sofas in the reception-rooms; and also refreshed themselves with food and drink--in quantities nearly unbelievable--but the Minority stayed loyally by their champion. Some distinguished deputies of the Majority stayed by him too, compelled thereto by admiration of his great performance. When a man has been speaking eight hours, is it conceivable that he can still be interesting, still fascinating? When Dr. Lecher had been speaking eight hours he was still compactly surrounded by friends who would not leave him, and by foes (of all parties) who could not; and all hung enchanted and wondering upon his words, and all testified their admiration with constant and cordial outbursts of applause. Surely this was a triumph without precedent in history.
During the twelve-hour effort friends brought to the orator three glasses of wine, four cups of coffee, and one glass of beer--a most stingy re-enforcement of his wasting tissues, but the hostile Chair would permit no addition to it. But, no matter, the Chair could not beat that man. He was a garrison holding a fort, and was not to be starved out.
When he had been speaking eight hours his pulse was 72; when he had spoken twelve, it was 100.
He finished his long speech in these terms, as nearly as a permissibly free translation can convey them:
'I will now hasten to close my examination of the subject. I conceive that we of the Left have made it clear to the honourable gentlemen of the other side of the House that we are stirred by no intemperate enthusiasm for this measure in its present shape...
'What we require, and shall fight for with all lawful weapons, is a formal, comprehensive, and definitive solution and settlement of these vexed matters. We desire the restoration of the earlier condition of things; the cancellation of all this incapable Government's pernicious trades with Hungary; and then--release from the sorry burden of the Badeni ministry!
'I voice the hope--I know not if it will be fulfilled--I voice the deep and sincere and patriotic hope that the committee into whose hands this bill will eventually be committed will take its stand upon high ground, and will return the Ausgleich-Provisorium to this House in a form which shall make it the protector and promoter alike of the great interests involved and of the honour of our fatherland.' After a pause, turning towards the Government benches: 'But in any case, gentlemen of the Majority, make sure of this: henceforth, as before, you find us at our post. The Germans of Austria will neither surrender nor die!'
Then burst a storm of applause which rose and fell, rose and fell, burst out again and again and again, explosion after explosion, hurricane after hurricane, with no apparent promise of ever coming to an end; and meantime the whole Left was surging and weltering about the champion, all bent upon wringing his hand and congratulating him and glorifying him.
Finally he got away, and went home and ate five loaves and twelve baskets of fish, read the morning papers, slept three hours, took a short drive, then returned to the House, and sat out the rest of the thirty-three-hour session.
To merely stand up in one spot twelve hours on a stretch is a feat which very few men could achieve; to add to the task the utterance of a hundred thousand words would be beyond the possibilities of the most of those few; to superimpose the requirement that the words should be put into the form of a compact, coherent, and symmetrical oration would probably rule out the rest of the few, bar Dr. Lecher.
III. --CURIOUS PARLIAMENTARY ETIQUETTE.
In consequence of Dr. Lecher's twelve-hour speech and the other obstructions furnished by the Minority, the famous thirty-three-hour sitting of the House accomplished nothing. The Government side had made a supreme effort, assisting itself with all the helps at hand, both lawful and unlawful, yet had failed to get the Ausgleich into the hands of a committee. This was a severe defeat. The Right was mortified, the Left jubilant.
Parliament was adjourned for a week--to let the members cool off, perhaps--a sacrifice of precious time; for but two months remained in which to carry the all-important Ausgleich to a consummation.
If I have reported the behaviour of the House intelligibly, the reader has been surprised by it, and has wondered whence these law-makers come and what they are made of; and he has probably supposed that the conduct exhibited at the Long Sitting was far out of the common, and due to special excitement and irritation. As to the make-up of the House, it is this: the deputies come from all the walks of life and from all the grades of society. There are princes, counts, barons, priests, peasants, mechanics, labourers, lawyers, judges, physicians, professors, merchants, bankers, shopkeepers. They are religious men, they are earnest, sincere, devoted, and they hate the Jews. The title of Doctor is so common in the House that one may almost say that the deputy who does not bear it is by that reason conspicuous. I am assured that it is not a self-granted title, and not an honorary one, but an earned one; that in Austria it is very seldom conferred as a mere compliment; that in Austria the degrees of Doctor of Music, Doctor of Philosophy, and so on, are not conferred by the seats of learning; and so, when an Austrian is called Doctor, it means that he is either a lawyer or a physician, and that he is not a self-educated man, but is college-bred, and has been diplomaed for merit.
That answers the question of the constitution of the House. Now as to the House's curious manners. The manners exhibited by this convention of Doctors were not at that time being tried as a wholly new experiment. Iwill go back to a previous sitting in order to show that the deputies had already had some practice.
