Page:Coubertin - France since 1814, 1900.djvu/53

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A RETROSPECT OF EIGHT YEARS
37

deputy is still none the less liable to go wrong in the way we have indicated, and during the Restoration his aberrations were extremely frequent.

That intemperance of language, which was quite as characteristic of the Left as of the Right, arose as much from the inexperience of the tribune as from the virulence of opinions. It was increased by the fact that the members of the Chamber were not used to the free discussion of public questions in a large area under a running fire of comments. The situation provided some excuse for it. We might even say that the inconvenient tendency to get intoxicated with your own eloquence, to exaggerate your meaning, to say a great deal more than you intended to say, however much it was to be deplored, did not entail any very serious consequences : Verba volant, acta manent. But it is impossible to describe the levity, the naïveté, with which the deputies of the Restoration shook the throne they proposed to defend, and made impossible the government they desired to found.

The Right soon showed its preference for the dangerous policy of stimulating reaction by exaggerating the movements which tend