The Man with the broken Ear by Edmond About (phonics books .TXT) 📕

ground and suppress all
inequalites of surface which seem to say to the
Government, 'Thou art less powerful than Nature!' Having
accomplished this preparatory work, I would trace a
circle three leagues in diameter, whose circumference,
marked by an elegant railing, should be the boundary of
Paris. At the centre I would build a palace for your
Majesty and the princes of the imperial family--a vast
and splendid edifice, including in its arrangements all
the public offices--the staff offices, courts, museums,
cabinet offices, archives, police, the Institute,
embassies, prisons, bank of France, lecture-rooms,
theatres, the Moniteur , imperial printing office,
manufactory of Sèvres porcelain and Gobelin tapestry,
and commissary arrangements. At this palace, circular in
form and of magnificent architecture, should centre
twelve boulevards, a hundred and twenty yards wide,
terminated by twelve railroads, and called by the names
of twelve marshals of France. Each boulevard is built up
with uniform houses, four stories high, having in front
an iron railing and a little garden three yards wide,
all to be planted with the same kind of flowers. A
hundred streets, sixty yards wide, should connect the
boulevards; these streets communicate with each other by
lanes thirty-five yards wide, the whole built up
uniformly according to official plans, with railings,
gardens, and specified flowers. Householders should be
prohibited from allowing any business to be conducted in
their establishments, for the aspect of shops debases
the intellect and degrades the heart. Merchants could be
permitted to establish themselves in the suburbs under
the regulation of the laws. The ground floors of all the
houses to be occupied with stables and kitchens; the
first floors let to persons worth an income of a hundred
thousand francs and over; the second, to those worth
from eighty to a hundred thousand francs; the third, to
those worth from sixty to eighty thousand; the fourth,
from fifty to sixty thousand. No one with an income of
less than fifty thousand francs should be permitted to
live in Paris. Workmen are to be lodged ten miles
outside of the boundary in workmen's barracks. We will
exempt them from taxes to make them love us; and we'll
plant cannon around them to make them fear us. That's my
Paris!' The Emperor listened to me patiently, and
twisted his moustache. 'Your plan,' said he, 'would cost
a trifle.'--'Not much more than the one already
adopted,' answered I. At this remark, an unreserved
hilarity, the cause of which I am unable to explain, lit
up his serious countenance. 'Don't you think,' said he,
'that your project would ruin a great many
people?'--'Eh! What difference does it make to me?' I
cried, 'since it will ruin none but the rich?' He began
laughing again, and bid me farewell, saying, 'Colonel,
you will have to remain colonel only until we make you
brigadier-general!' He permitted me to press his hand a
second time. I waved an adieu to brave Leblanc, who has
invited me to dine with him this evening, and I returned
to my hotel to pour my joy into your sweet soul. Oh,
Clementine! hope on! You shall be happy, and I shall be
great! To-morrow morning I leave for Dantzic. Gold is a
deception, but I want you to be rich.

"A sweet kiss upon your pure brow!

"V. FOUGAS."

The subscribers to La Patrie , who keep files of their paper, are hereby requested to hunt up the number for the 23d of August, 1859. In it they will find two paragraphs of local intelligence, which I have taken the liberty of copying here:

"His Excellency, the Marshal, the Duke of Solferino, yesterday had the honor of presenting to his Majesty the Emperor a hero of the first Empire, Colonel Fougas, whom an almost miraculous event, already mentioned in a report to the Academy of Sciences, has restored to his country."

Such was the first paragraph; here is the second

"A madman, the fourth this week, but the most dangerous of all, presented himself yesterday at one of the entrances of the Tuilleries. Decked out in a grotesque costume, his eyes flashing, his hat cocked over his ear, and addressing the most respectable people with unheard-of rudeness, he attempted to force his way past the sentry, and thrust himself, for what purpose God only knows, into the presence of the Sovereign. During his incoherent ejaculations, the following words were distinguished: 'bravery, Vendôme column, fidelity, the dial-plate of time, the tablets of history.' When he was arrested by one of the detective watch, and taken before the police commissioner of the Tuilleries section, he was recognized as the same individual who, the evening before, at the opera, had interrupted the performance of Charles VI. with most unseemly cries. After the customary medical and legal proceedings, he was ordered to be sent to the Charenton Hospital. But opposite the porte Saint-Martin , taking advantage of a lock among the vehicles, and of the Herculean strength with which he is endowed, he wrested his hands from his keeper, threw him down, beat him, leaped at a bound into the street, and disappeared in the crowd. The most active search was immediately set on foot, and we have it from the best authority that the police are already on the track of the fugitive."


CHAPTER XVII.

WHEREIN HERR NICHOLAS MEISER, ONE OF THE SOLID MEN OF DANTZIC, RECEIVES AN UNWELCOME VISIT.


The wisdom of mankind declares that ill-gotten gains never do any good. I maintain that they do the robbers more good than the robbed, and the good fortune of Herr Nicholas Meiser is an argument in support of my proposition.

The nephew of the illustrious physiologist, after brewing a great deal of beer from a very little hops, and prematurely appropriating the legacy intended for Fougas, had amassed, by various operations, a fortune of from eight to ten millions. "In what kind of operations?" No one ever told me, but I know that he called all operations that would make money, good ones. To lend small sums at a big interest, to accumulate great stores of grain in order to relieve a scarcity after producing it himself, to foreclose on unfortunate debtors, to fit out a vessel or two for trade in black flesh on the African coast--such are specimens of the speculations which the good man did not despise. He never boasted of them, for he was modest; but he never blushed for them, for he had expanded his conscience simultaneously with his capital. As for the rest, he was a man of honor, in the commercial sense of the word, and capable of strangling the whole human race rather than of letting his signature be protested. The banks of Dantzic, Berlin, Vienna, and Paris, held him in high esteem; his money passed through all of them.

He was fat, unctuous, and florid, and lived well. His wife's nose was much too long, and her bones much too prominent, but she loved him with all her heart, and made him little sweetmeats. A perfect congeniality of sentiment united this charming couple. They talked with each other with open hearts, and never thought of keeping back any of their evil thoughts. Every year, at Saint Martin's day, when rents became due, they turned out of doors the families of five or six workmen who could not pay for their terms; but they dined none the worse after it, and their good-night kiss was none the less sweet.

The husband was sixty-six years old, the wife sixty-four. Their physiognomies were such as inspire benevolence and command respect. To complete their outward resemblance to the patriarchs, nothing was needed but children and grandchildren. Nature had given them one son--an only one, because they had not solicited Nature for more. They would have thought it criminal improvidence to divide their fortune among several. Unhappily, this only child, the heir-presumptive to so many millions, died at the University of Heidelberg from eating too many sausages. He set out, when he was twenty, for that Valhalla of German students, where they eat infinite sausages, and drink inexhaustible beer; where they sing songs of eight hundred million verses, and gash the tips of each other's noses with huge swords. Envious Death snatched him from his parents when they were no longer of an age to improvise a successor. The unfortunate old millionnaires tenderly collected his effects, to sell them. During this operation, so trying to their souls (for there was a great deal of brand-new linen that could not be found), Nicholas Meiser said to his wife, "My heart bleeds at the idea that our buildings and dollars, our goods above ground and under, should go to strangers. Parents ought always to have an extra son, just as they have a vice-umpire in the Chamber of Commerce."

But Time, who is a great teacher in Germany and several other countries, led them to see that there is consolation for all things except the loss of money. Five years afterwards, Frau Meiser said to her husband, with a tender and philosophic, smile: "Who can fathom the decrees of Providence? Perhaps your son would have brought us to a crust. Look at Theobald Scheffler, his old comrade. He wasted twenty thousand francs at Paris on a woman who kicked up her legs in the middle of a quadrille. We ourselves spent more than two thousand thalers a year for our wicked scapegrace. His death is a great saving, and therefore a good thing!"

As long as the three coffins of Fougas were in the house, the good dame scolded at the visions and restlessness of her husband. "What in the name of sense are you thinking about? You've been kicking me all night again. Let's throw this ragamuffin of a Frenchman into the fire; then he'll no longer disturb the repose of a peaceable family. We can sell the leaden box; it must weigh at least two hundred pounds. The white silk will make me a good lining for a dress; and the wool in the stuffing, will easily make us a mattress." But a tinge of superstition prevented Meiser from following his wife's advice; he preferred to rid himself of the Colonel by selling him.

The house of this worthy couple was the handsomest and most substantial on the street of Public Wells, in the aristocratic part