the--what you call--the debate, that is what I have for so long
hoped. Eh! Pardon,--you are thinking me foolish,--wild, eh?--a small
child,--eh?"
Becoming more and more dialectical as she went on, she said suddenly, "I
have you of myself offended. You are mad of me as a bold, bad child? It
is so?"
The Senator, as visibly becoming limp and weak again behind his
entrenchments, managed to say, "Oh, no!" then, "really!" and finally,
"Tha-a-nks!"
"I am here but for a day. I return to California in a day, as it were
to-morrow. I shall never, never hear you speak in your place in the
Capitol of this great country?"
The Senator said hastily that he feared--he in fact was convinced--that
his duty during this session was required more at his desk, in the
committee work, than in speaking, &c., &c.
"Ah," said Carmen sadly, "it is true, then, all this that I have heard.
It is true that what they have told me,--that you have given up the
great party,--that your voice is not longer heard in the old--what you
call this--eh--the old ISSUES?"
"If any one has told you that, Miss De Haro," responded the Senator
sharply, "he has spoken foolishly. You have been misinformed. May I ask
who--"
"Ah!" said Carmen, "I know not! It is in the air! I am a stranger.
Perhaps I am deceived. But it is of all. I say to them, When shall I
hear him speak? I go day after day to the Capitol, I watch him,--the
great Emancipator,--but it is of business, eh?--it is the claim of that
one, it is the tax, eh? it is the impost, it is the post-office, but it
is the great speech of human rights--never, NEVER. I say, 'How arrives
all this?' And some say, and shake their heads, 'never again he speaks.'
He is what you call 'played--yes, it is so, eh?--played out.' I know it
not,--it is a word from Bos-ton, perhaps? They say he has--eh, I speak
not the English well--the party he has shaken, 'shook,'--yes,--he has
the party 'shaken,' eh? It is right,--it is the language of Bos-ton,
eh?"
"Permit me to say, Miss De Haro," returned the Senator, rising with some
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