On the one side was a quick, single-minded young woman with a passion for argument; on the other an exceedingly reserved man with a hesitant, circumlocutory manner and an aversion to direct eye contact.
You see class divisions, the cruelty of the state, the oppression of women and their ways of resisting it, traditions of generosity and hospitality, and above all a passion for argument.
All her passion for argument was employed to prove that hamm, a piece of land almost enclosed by water, was as vital a suffix as ham, a man-made enclosure; that an ending in -den might come from denu, a long and sinuous valley, rather than denn, a woodland pig-pasture; and that the hall in Coggeshall came from halh, a nook or a hollow, not some grand building.
As one might guess from the passion of his argument, Wills was one of them.
"It is only with MS in hand that the real meaning of the text becomes apparent: its rhythms and cadences, the relationship of image to word, the passion of the argument or cold logic of the case".
One thing that helped Mr. Kline's cause was the focus and passion of his argument about permanence; another was a lead gift of $20 million, which he had secured from an anonymous benefactor.
But there is no shortage of passion in the arguments brandished by Ms. Parronchi and Ms. Falletti and their respective supporters, arguments in which science and experience have been marshaled for partisan purposes.
And she describes how tired a woman can grow of her husband's noisy ideological passions, "sick of argument and conviction," weary of "the never-letting-up" of his striving personality.
But with few spectators in the gallery, little passion in the arguments and an outcome that has been practically preordained for weeks, the reach toward grandeur occasionally fell flat.
Kaldor writes as an academic and an activist - as an "organic intellectual" of the peace movement, to use an older parlance - and this lends her arguments passion and commitment.
