pamphlets on political economy, with books of the great philosophers, histories, and some hundreds of booklets, and all the political speeches from Demosthenes up to Bismarck. Then there were anthologies of quotations, which industrious Germans collect and classify according to subjects, and which are of great use for oratorical ornamentations. The minutes of the Diet were bound in leather. The statutes and laws of Bohemia and Austria lay in a big heap, from which he sometimes took out a volume to read a page and, yawning, put it back.
His large writing-desk was covered with papers and a mass of documents, and there, from day to day, he carefully deposited his campaign speeches, speeches full of fire, full of promises to the voters of all the classes, full of sulphury flashes and thunder against unyielding Vienna,—the great and famous July elections were not far off!
The doctor called on him often. He smoked, while Jiří read to him his weighty
