Without apparently noticing his manner, Carmen went on, with a certain potential freedom of style, gesture, and manner scarcely to be indicated in her mere words. “You know, then, I am of Spanish blood, and that, what was my adopted country, our motto was, 'God and Liberty.' It was of you, sir,--the great Emancipator,--the apostle of that Liberty,--the friend of the down-trodden and oppressed,--that I, as a child, first knew. In the histories of this great country I have read of you, I have learned your orations. I have longed to hear you in your own pulpit deliver the creed of my ancestors. To hear you, of yourself, speak, ah! Madre de Dios! what shall I say,--speak the oration eloquent,--to make 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?”