"Now, Messieurs, we ask ourselves how it was that a stranger, a Provencal recently returned from the Orient, entirely ignorant of the interests and needs of that island where he had never been seen before the elections, the true type of what the Corsicans contemptuously call 'a continental'--how did this man succeed in arousing such enthusiasm, devotion so great as to lead to crime, to profanation? His wealth will answer the question, his vile gold thrown into the faces of the electors, stuffed by force into their pockets with a shameless cynicism of which we have innumerable proofs."--Then came the endless series of affidavits: "I, the undersigned, Croce (Antoine), do testify, in the interest of truth, that Nardi, commissioner of police, came to our house one evening and said to me, 'Hark ye, Croce (Antoine), I swear to you by the flame of yonder lamp that, if you vote for Jansoulet, you shall have fifty francs to-morrow morning,'"--And this: "I, the undersigned, Lavezzi (Jacques-Alphonse), declare that I refused with scorn seventeen francs offered me by the mayor of Pozzo-Negro to vote against my cousin Sebastiani."--It is probable that for three francs more Lavezzi (Jacques-Alphonse) would have devoured his scorn in silence. But the Chamber did not go so deep as that. It was moved to indignation, was that incorruptible Chamber. It muttered, it moved about restlessly on its soft benches of red velvet, it uttered noisy exclamations. There were "Ohs!" of stupefaction, eyes like circumflex accents, sudden backward movements, or appalled, discouraged gestures, such as the spectacle of human degradation sometimes calls forth. And observe that the majority of those deputies had used the identical electoral methods, that there were on those benches heroes of the famous "rastels," of those open-air banquets at which begarlanded and beribboned calves were borne aloft in triumph as at Gargantua's kermesses. They naturally cried out louder than the others, turned in righteous wrath toward the high, solitary bench where the poor leper sat motionless, listening, his head in his hands. But amid the general hue and cry, a single voice arose in his favor, a low, unpractised voice, rather a sympathetic buzzing than speech, in which could be vaguely distinguished the words: "Great services rendered to Corsica. Extensive enterprises. _Caisse Territoriale._"