Yet all the while anger and resentment were hardening me in my resolve; and, presently, the cloud passed from my mind, and left me exulting. The monotonous reading, to which I had listened without understanding it, came to an end, and was followed by short, sharp interrogations--a question and an answer, a name and a reply. It was that awoke me. The drawl had been the reading of the cahier; now they were voting on it. Presently it would be my turn; it was coming to my turn now. With each vote--I need not say that all were affirmative--more faces, and yet more, were turned to the place where I sat; more eyes, some hostile, some triumphant, some merely curious, were directed to my face. Under other circumstances this might have cowed me; now it did not. I was wrought up to face it. The unfriendly looks of so many who had called themselves my friends, the scornful glances of new men of ennobled families, who had been glad of my father's countenance, the consciousness that all had deserted me merely because I maintained in practice opinions which half of them had proclaimed in words--these things hardened me to a pitch of scorn no whit below that of my opponents; while the knowledge that to blench now must cover me with lasting shame closed the door to thoughts of surrender. The Assembly, on the other hand, felt the novelty of its position. Men were not yet accustomed to the war of the Senate; to duels of words more deadly than those of the sword: and a certain doubt, a certain hesitation, held the majority in suspense, watching to see what would happen. Moreover, the leaders, both M. de St. Alais, who headed the hotter and prouder party of the Court, and the nobles of the Robe and Parliament, who had only lately discovered that their interest lay in the same direction, found themselves embarrassed by the very smallness of the opposition; since a substantial majority must have been accepted as a fact, whereas one man--one man only standing in the way of unanimity--presented himself as a thing to be removed, if the way could be discovered. "M. le Comte de Cantal?" the President cried, and looked, not at the person he named, but at me. "Content!" "M. le Vicomte de Marignac?" "Content!" The next name I could not hear, for in my excitement it seemed that all in the Chamber were looking at me, that voice was failing me, that when the moment came I should sit dumb and paralysed, unable to speak, and for ever disgraced. I thought of this, not of what was passing; then, in a moment, self-control returned; I heard the last name before mine, that of M. d'Aulnoy, heard the answer given. Then my own name, echoing in hollow silence. "M. le Vicomte de Saux?" I stood up. I spoke, my voice sounding harsh, and like another man's. "I dissent from this cahier!" I cried.