It was in very truth her boy's sitting; for in that crowd besieging the doors, in the crowd that filled the corridors, the hall, the galleries, the whole palace, the same name was whispered everywhere, accompanied by smiles and muttered comments. A great scandal was expected, shocking revelations by the spokesman of the committee which would doubtless lead to some violent outburst on the part of the savage thus brought to bay; and people crowded thither as to a first performance or the argument of a famous cause. The old mother certainly could not have made herself heard in the midst of that throng, if the train of gold left by the Nabob wherever he passed, and marking his royal progress, had not made everything smooth for her. She followed an usher through that labyrinth of corridors, folding doors, empty, echoing rooms, filled with a buzzing noise which circulated through the air in the building and passed out through its walls, as if the very stones were impregnated with that verbosity and added the echoes of bygone days to those of all the voices of to-day. Passing through a corridor, she spied a little dark man shouting and gesticulating to the attendants: "Tell Moussiou Jansoulet zat I am ze deputy-mayor of Sarlazaccio, zat I have been sentenced to five month in prison for him. Zat deserves a card for ze sitting, _Corps de Dieu_!" Five months in prison on her son's account. How could that be? Anxious beyond words, she arrived at last, with a ringing in her ears, at a landing where there were divers little doors like those of furnished lodgings or theatre boxes, surmounted by different inscriptions: "Senators' Gallery," "Gallery of the Diplomatic Corps," "Members' Gallery." She entered, seeing nothing at first but four or five rows of benches crowded with people; then, on the opposite side of the hall, far away, other galleries equally crowded, separated from her by a vast open space; she leaned, still standing, against the wall, amazed to be there, bewildered, confused. A puff of hot air striking her in the face, the hum of voices ascending from below drew her down the sloping floor of the gallery, toward the edge of a yawning pit, so to speak, in the centre of the great vessel, where her son must be. Oh, how she would have liked to see him! Thereupon, making herself as small as possible, playing about her with her elbows, sharp and hard as her distaff, she glided, wormed herself along between the wall and the benches, heedless of the outbursts of wrath she aroused, of the contemptuous glances of the women in gorgeous array, whose laces and spring dresses she crushed. For it was a distinctly fashionable society gathering.