The article which the Baron was re-perusing in a halfpenny newspaper interested him. “La Voix du Peuple” was a noisy sheet which, under the pretence of defending outraged justice and morality, set a fresh scandal circulating every morning in the hope of thereby increasing its sales.
And that morning, in big type on its front page, this sub-title was displayed: “The Affair of the African Railways. Five Millions spent in Bribes: Two Ministers Bought, Thirty Deputies and Senators Compromised.”
Then in an article of odious violence the paper’s editor, the famous Sagnier, announced that he possessed and intended to publish the list of the thirty-two members of Parliament, whose support Baron Duvillard had purchased at the time when the Chambers had voted the bill for the African Railway Lines
