The object of this door was to prevent the ingress of much more foul matter from without; and its misfortune was, that in so doing it necessarily pent up a concentrated putrid gas within. Atlength Nephelo escaped; but, alas! it was from a Newgate to a Bastille—from the drain into the sewer. This was a long-vaulted prison running near the surface underneath the street. Shaken by the passage overhead of carriages, not a few bricks had fallen in; and Nephelo hurrying forward, wholly possessed by the one thought—could he escape?—fell presently into a trap. An oyster-shell had fixed itself upright between two bricks unevenly jointed together; much solid filth had grown around it; and in this Nephelo was caught. Here he remained for a whole month, during which time he saw many floods of water pass him, leaving himself with a vast quantity of obstinate encrusted filth unmoved. At the month’s end there came some men to scrape, and sweep, and cleanse; then with a sudden flow of water, Nephelo was forced along, and presently, with a large number of emancipated foulnesses, received his discharge from prison, and was let loose upon the River Thames.
Nephelo struck against a very dirty Drop.
“Keep off, will you?” the Drop exclaimed. “You are not fit to touch a person, sewer-bird.”
“Why, where are you from, my sweet gentleman?”
“Oh! I? I’ve had a turn through some Model Drains. Tubular drains they call ’em. Look at me; isn’t that clear?”
“There’s nothing clear about you,” replied Nephelo. “What do you mean by Model Drains?”
“I mean I’ve come from Upper George Street through a twelve-inch pipe four or five times faster than one travels over an old sewer-bed; travelled express, no stoppage.”
“Indeed!”
“Yes. Impermeable, earthenware, tubular pipes, accurately dove-tailed. I come from an experimental district. When it’s all settled, there’s to be water on at high pressure everywhere, and an earthenware drain pipe under every tap, a tube of no more than the necessary size. Then these little pipes are to run down the earth; and there’s not to be a great brick drain running underneath each house into the street; the pipes run into a largertube of earthenware that is to be laid at the backs of all the houses; these tubes run into larger ones, but none of them very monstrous; and so that there is a constant flow, like circulation of the blood; and all the pipes are to run at last into one large conduit, which is to run out of town with all the sewage matter and discharge so far down the Thames, that no return tide ever can bring it back to London. Some is to go branching off into the fields to be manure.”
“Humph!” said Nephelo. “You profess to be very clever. How do you know all this?”
“Know? Bless you, I’m a regular old Thames Drop. I’ve been in the cisterns, in the tumblers, down the sewers, in the river, up the pipes, in the reservoirs, in the cisterns, in the teapots, down the sewers, in the river, up the pipes, in the reservoirs, in the cisterns, in the saucepans, down the sewers, in the Thames—”
“Hold! Stop there now!” said Nephelo. “Well, so you have heard a great deal in your lifetime. You’ve had some adventures, doubtless?”
“I believe you,” said the Cockney-Drop. “The worst was when I was pumped once as fresh water into Rotherhithe. That place is below high-water mark; so are Bermondsey and St. George’s, Southwark. Newington, St. Olave’s, Westminster, and Lambeth, are but little better. Well, you know, drains of the old sort always leak, and there’s a great deal more water poured into London than the Londoners have stowage room for, so the water in low districts can’t pass off at high water, and there’s a precious flood. We sopped the ground at Rotherhithe, but I thought I never should escape again.”
“Will the new pipes make any difference to that?”
“Yes; so I am led to understand. They are to be laid with a regular fall, to pass the water off, which, being constant, will be never in excess. The fall will be to a point of course below the water level, and at a convenient place the contents of these drains are to be pumped up into the main sewer. Horrible deal of death caused, Sir, by thedamp in those low districts. One man in thirty-seven died of cholera in Rotherhithe last year, when in Clerkenwell, at sixty-three feet above high water, there died but one in five hundred and thirty. The proportion held throughout.”
“Ah, by the bye, you have heard, of course, complainings of the quality of water. Will the Londoners sink wells for themselves?”
“Wells! What a child you are! Just from the clouds, I see. Wells in a large town get horribly polluted. They propose to consolidate and improve two of the best Thames Water Companies, the Grand Junction and Vauxhall, for the supply of London, until their great scheme can be introduced; and to maintain them afterwards as a reserve guard in case their great scheme shouldn’t prove so triumphant as they think it will be.”
“What is this great scheme, I should like to know?”
“Why, they talk of fetching rain-water from a tract of heath between Bagshot and Farnham. The rain there soaks through a thin crust of growingherbage, which is the only perfect filter, chemical as well as mechanical—the living rootlets extract more than we can, where impurity exists. Then, Sir, the rain runs into a large bed of silicious sand, placed over marl; below the marl there is silicious sand again—Ah, I perceive you are not geological.”
“Go on.”
“The sand, washed by the rains of ages, holds the water without soiling it more than a glass tumbler would, and the Londoners say that in this way, by making artificial channels and a big reservoir, they can collect twenty-eight thousand gallons a day of water nearly pure. They require forty thousand gallons, and propose to get the rest in the same neighborhood from tributaries of the River Wey, not quite so pure, but only half as hard as Thames water, and unpolluted.”
“How is it to get to London?”
“Through a covered aqueduct. Covered for coolness’ sake, and cleanliness. Then it is to be distributed through earthenware pipes, laid ratherdeep, again for coolness’ sake in the first instance, but for cleanliness as well. The water is to come in at high pressure, and run in iron or lead pipes up every house, scale every wall. There is to be a tap in every room, and under every tap there is to be the entrance to a drain-pipe. Where water supply ends, drainage begins. They are to be the two halves of a single system. Furthermore, there are to be numbers of plugs opening in every street, and streets and courts are to be washed out every morning, or every other morning, as the traffic may require, with hose and jet. The Great Metropolis mustn’t be dirty, or be content with rubbing a finger here and there over its dirt. It is to have its face washed every morning, just before the hours of business. The water at high pressure is to set people’s invention at work upon the introduction of hydraulic apparatus for cranes, et cætera, which now cause much hand labor and are scarcely worth steam-power. Furthermore—”
“My dear friend,” cried Nephelo, “you are tooclever. More than half of what you say is unintelligible to me.”
“But the grand point,” continued the garrulous Thames drop, “is the expense. The saving of cisterns, ball-cocks, plumbers’ bills, expansive sewer-works, constant repairs, hand labor, street-sweeping, soap, tea, linen, fuel, steam-boilers now damaged by incrustation, boards, salaries, doctors’ bills, time, parish rates—”
The catalogue was never ended, for the busy Drop was suddenly entangled among hair upon the corpse of a dead cat, which fate also the fairy narrowly escaped, to be in the next minute sucked up as Nubis had been sucked, through pipes into a reservoir. Weary with the incessant chattering of his conceited friend, whose pride he trusted that a night with puss might humble, Nephelo now lurked silent in a corner. In a dreamy state he floated with the current underground, and was half sleeping in a pipe under some London street, when a great noise of trampling overhead, mingled with cries, awakened him.
“What is the matter now?” the fairy cried.
“A fire, no doubt, to judge by the noise,” said a neighbor quietly. Nephelo panted now with triumph. Cirrha was before his eyes. Now he could benefit the race of man.
“Let us get out,” cried Nephelo; “let us assist in running to the rescue.”
“Don’t be impatient,” said a drowsy Drop. “We can’t get out of here till they have found the Company’s turncock, and then he must go to this plug and that plug in one street, and another, before we are turned off.”
“In the meantime the fire—”
“Will burn the house down. Help in five minutes would save a house. Now the luckiest man will seldom have his premises attended to in less than twenty.”
Nephelo thought here was another topic for his gossip in the Thames. The plugs talked of with a constant water-supply would take the sting out of the Fire-Fiend.
Presently among confused movements, confusedsounds, amid a rush of water, Nephelo burst into the light—into the vivid light of a great fire that leapt and roared as Nephelo was dashed against it! Through the red flames and the black smoke in a burst of steam, the fairy reascended hopeless to the clouds.
RASCALLY CONDUCT OF THE PRINCE OF NIMBUS.
The Prince of Nimbus, whose good-nature we have celebrated, was not good for nothing. Having graciously permitted all the suitors of the Princess Cirrha to go down to earth and labor for her hand, he took advantage of their absence, and, having the coast clear, importuned the daughter of King Cumulus with his own addresses. Cirrha was not disposed to listen to them, but the rogue her father was ambitious. He desired to make a good alliance, and that object was better gained by intermarriage with a prince than with a subject.“There will be an uproar,” said the old man, “when those fellows down below come back. They will look black and no doubt storm a little, but we’ll have our royal marriage notwithstandstanding.” So the Prince of Nimbus married Cirrha, and Nephelo arrived at the court of King Cumulus one evening during the celebration of the bridal feast. His wrath was seen on earth in many parts of England in the shape of a great thunderstorm on the 16th of July. The adventures of the other suitors, they being thus cheated of their object, need not be detailed. As each returns he will be made acquainted with the scandalous fraud practised by the Prince of Nimbus, and this being the state of politics in Cloud-Land at the moment when we go to press, we may fairly expect to witness five or six more thunderstorms before next winter. Each suitor, as he returns and finds how shamefully he has been cheated, will create a great disturbance; and no wonder. Conduct so rascally as that of the Prince of Nimbus is enough to fill the clouds with uproar.
IN one of the dirtiest and most gloomy streets leading to the Rue Saint Denis, in Paris, there stands a tall and ancient house, the lower portion of which is a large mercer’s shop. This establishment is held to be one of the very best in the neighborhood, and has for many years belonged to an individual on whom we will bestow the name of Ramin.
About ten years ago, Monsieur Ramin was a jovial red-faced man of forty, who joked his customers into purchasing his goods, flattered the prettygrisettesoutrageously, and now and then gave them a Sunday treat at the barrier, as the cheapest way of securing their custom. Some peoplethought him a careless, good-natured fellow, and wondered how, with his off-hand ways, he contrived to make money so fast, but those who knew him well saw that he was one of those who “never lost an opportunity.” Others declared that Monsieur Ramin’s own definition of his character was, that he was a “bon enfant,” and that “it was all luck.” He shrugged his shoulders and laughed when people hinted at his deep scheming in making, and his skill in taking advantage of Excellent Opportunities.
He was sitting in his gloomy parlor one fine morning in Spring, breakfasting from a dark liquid honored with the name of onion soup, glancing at the newspaper, and keeping a vigilant look on the shop through the open door, when his old servant Catherine suddenly observed:—
“I suppose you know Monsieur Bonelle has come to live in the vacant apartment on the fourth floor?”
“What!” exclaimed Monsieur Ramin in a loud key.
Catherine repeated her statement, to which her master listened in total silence.
“Well!” he said, at length, in his most carelesstones, “what about the old fellow?” and he once more resumed his triple occupation of reading, eating, and watching.
“Why,” continued Catherine, “they say he is nearly dying, and that his housekeeper, Marguerite, vowed he could never get up stairs alive. It took two men to carry him up; and when he was at length quiet in bed, Marguerite went down to the porter’s lodge and sobbed there a whole hour, saying, ‘Her poor master had the gout, the rheumatics, and a bad asthma; that though he had been got up stairs, he would never come down again alive; that if she could only get him to confess his sins and make his will, she would not mind it so much; but that when she spoke of the lawyer or the priest, he blasphemed at her like a heathen, and declared he would live to bury her and everybody else.’ ”
Monsieur Ramin heard Catherine with great attention, forgot to finish his soup, and remained for five minutes in profound rumination, without so much as perceiving two customers who had entered the shop and were waiting to be served. When aroused, he was heard to exclaim:
“What an excellent opportunity!”
Monsieur Bonelle had been Ramin’s predecessor. The succession of the latter to the shop was a mystery. No one ever knew how it was that this young and poor assistant managed to replace his patron. Some said that he had detected Monsieur Bonelle in frauds which he threatened to expose, unless the business were given up to him as the price of his silence; others averred that, having drawn a prize in the lottery, he had resolved to set up a fierce opposition over the way, and that Monsieur Bonelle, having obtained a hint of his intentions, had thought it most prudent to accept the trifling sum his clerk offered, and avoid a ruinous competition. Some charitable souls—moved no doubt by Monsieur Bonelle’s misfortune—endeavored to console and pump him; but all they could get from him was the bitter exclamation, “To think I should have been duped byhim!” For Ramin had the art, though then a mere youth, to pass himself off on his master as an innocent provincial lad. Those who sought an explanation from the new mercer, were still more unsuccessful. “My good old master,” he said in his jovial way, “felt in need of repose, and so I obligingly relieved him of all business and botheration.”
Years passed away; Ramin prospered, and neither thought nor heard of his “good old master.” The house, of which he tenanted the lower portion, was offered for sale; he had long coveted it, and had almost concluded an agreement with the actual owner, when Monsieur Bonelle unexpectedly stepped in at the eleventh hour, and by offering a trifle more secured the bargain. The rage and mortification of Monsieur Ramin were extreme. He could not understand how Bonelle, whom he had thought ruined, had scraped up so large a sum; his lease was out, and he now felt himself at the mercy of the man he had so much injured. But either Monsieur Bonelle was free from vindictive feelings, or those feelings did not blind him to the expediency of keeping a good tenant; for though he raised the rent, until Monsieur Ramin groaned inwardly, he did not refuse to renew the lease. They had met at that period; but never since.
“Well, Catherine,” observed Monsieur Ramin to his old servant on the following morning, “how is that good Monsieur Bonelle getting on?”
“I dare say you feel very uneasy about him,” she replied with a sneer.
Monsieur Ramin looked up and frowned.
“Catherine,” said he, dryly, “you will have the goodness, in the first place, not to make impertinent remarks; in the second place, you will oblige me by going up stairs to inquire after the health of Monsieur Bonelle, and say that I sent you.”
Catherine grumbled and obeyed. Her master was in the shop, when she returned in a few minutes, and delivered with evident satisfaction the following gracious message:
“Monsieur Bonelle desires his compliments to you, and declines to state how he is; he will also thank you to attend to your own shop, and not to trouble yourself about his health.”
“How does he look?” asked Monsieur Ramin with the most perfect composure.
“I caught a glimpse of him, and he appears to me to be rapidly preparing for the good offices of the undertaker.”
Monsieur Ramin smiled, rubbed his hands, and joked merrily with a dark-eyed grisette, who was cheapening some ribbon for her cap. That girl made an excellent bargain that day.
Towards dusk the mercer left the shop to the care of his attendant, and softly stole up to the fourth story. In answer to his gentle ring, a littleold woman opened the door, and giving him a rapid look, said briefly,
“Monsieur is inexorable; he won’t see any doctor whatever.”
She was going to shut the door in his face, when Ramin quickly interposed, under his breath, with, “Iam not a doctor.”
She looked at him from head to foot.
“Are you a lawyer?”
“Nothing of the sort, my good lady.”
“Well, then, are you a priest?”
“I may almost say, quite the reverse.”
“Indeed, you must go away; master sees no one.”
Once more she would have shut the door, but Ramin prevented her.
“My good lady,” said he, in his most insinuating tones, “it is true I am neither a lawyer, a doctor, nor a priest. I am an old friend, a very old friend of your excellent master; I have come to see good Monsieur Bonelle in his present affliction.”
Marguerite did not answer, but allowed him to enter, and closed the door behind him. He was going to pass from the narrow and gloomy ante-chamber into an inner room—whence now proceededa sound of loud coughing—when the old woman laid her hand on his arm, and raising herself on tip-toe to reach his ear, whispered:
“For Heaven’s sake, sir, since you are his friend, do talk to him; do tell him to make his will, and hint something about a soul to be saved, and all that sort of a thing: do, sir!”
Monsieur Ramin nodded and winked in a way that said “I will.” He proved, however, his prudence by not speaking aloud, for a voice from within sharply exclaimed,
“Marguerite, you are talking to some one. Marguerite, I will see neither doctor nor lawyer; and if any meddling priest dare—”
“It is only an old friend, sir;” interrupted Marguerite, opening the inner door.
Her master, on looking up, perceived the red face of Monsieur Ramin peeping over the old woman’s shoulder, and irefully cried out,
“How dare you bring that fellow here? And you, sir, how dare you come?”
“My good old friend, there are feelings,” said Ramin, spreading his fingers over the left pocket of his waistcoat,—“there are feelings,” he repeated, “that cannot be subdued. One such feelingbrought me here. The fact is, I am a good-natured, easy fellow, and I never bear malice. I never forget an old friend, but love to forget old differences when I find one party in affliction.”
He drew a chair forward as he spoke, and composedly seated himself opposite to his late master.
Monsieur Bonelle was a thin old man, with a pale sharp face, and keen features. At first, he eyed his visitor from the depths of his vast arm-chair; but, as if not satisfied with this distant view, he bent forward, and laying both hands on his thin knees, he looked up into Ramin’s face with a fixed and piercing gaze. He had not, however, the power of disconcerting his guest.
“What did you come here for?” he at length asked.
“Merely to have the extreme satisfaction of seeing how you are, my good old friend. Nothing more.”
“Well, look at me—and then go.”
Nothing could be so discouraging; but this was an Excellent Opportunity, and when Monsieur Raminhadan excellent opportunity in view, his pertinacity was invincible. Being now resolved to stay, it was not in Monsieur Bonelle’s power tobanish him. At the same time, he had tact enough to render his presence agreeable. He knew that his coarse and boisterous wit had often delighted Monsieur Bonelle of old, and he now exerted himself so successfully as to betray the old man two or three times into hearty laughter.
“Ramin,” said he, at length, laying his thin hand on the arm of his guest, and peering with his keen glance into the mercer’s purple face, “you are a funny fellow, but I know you; you cannot make me believe you have called just to see how I am, and to amuse me. Come, be candid for once; what do you want?”
Ramin threw himself back in his chair, and laughed blandly, as much as to say, “Canyou suspect me?”
“I have no shop now out of which you can wheedle me,” continued the old man; “and surely you are not such a fool as to come to me for money.”
“Money?” repeated the draper, as if his host had mentioned something he never dreamt of. “Oh no!”
Ramin saw it would not do to broach the subject he had really come about, too abruptly, now thatsuspicion seemed so wide awake—theopportunity had not arrived.
“There is something up, Ramin, I know; I see it in the twinkle of your eye; but you can’t deceive me again.”
“Deceiveyou?” said the jolly schemer, shaking his head reverentially. “Deceive a man of your penetration and depth? Impossible! The bare supposition is flattery. My dear friend,” he continued, soothingly, “I did not dream of such a thing. The fact is, Bonelle, though they call me a jovial, careless, rattling dog, I have a conscience; and, somehow, I have never felt quite easy about the way in which I became your successor downstairs. Itwasrather sharp practice, I admit.”
Bonelle seemed to relent.
“Now for it,” said the Opportunity-hunter to himself—“By-the-by,” (speaking aloud,) “this house must be a great trouble to you in your present weak state? Two of your lodgers have lately gone away without paying—a great nuisance, especially to an invalid.”
“I tell you I’m as sound as a colt.”
“At all events, the whole concern must be agreat bother to you. If I were you, I would sell the house.”
“And if I wereyou,” returned the landlord, dryly, “I would buy it—”
“Precisely,” interrupted the tenant, eagerly.
“That is, if you could get it. Phoo! I knew you were after something. Will you give eighty thousand francs for it?” abruptly asked Monsieur Bonelle.
“Eighty thousand francs!” echoed Ramin. “Do you take me for Louis Philippe or the Bank of France?”
“Then, we’ll say no more about it—are you not afraid of leaving your shop so long?”
Ramin returned to the charge, heedless of the hint to depart. “The fact is, my good old friend, ready money is not my strong point just now. But if you wish very much to be relieved of the concern, what say you to a life annuity? I could manage that.”
Monsieur Bonelle gave a short, dry, churchyard cough, and looked as if his life were not worth an hour’s purchase. “You think yourself immensely clever, I dare say,” he said. “They have persuadedyou that I am dying. Stuff! I shall bury you yet.”
The mercer glanced at the thin fragile frame, and exclaimed to himself, “Deluded old gentleman!” “My dear Bonelle,” he continued, aloud, “I know well the strength of your admirable constitution; but allow me to observe that you neglect yourself too much. Now, suppose a good sensible doctor—”
“Will you pay him?” interrogated Bonelle sharply.
“Most willingly,” replied Ramin, with an eagerness that made the old man smile. “As to the annuity, since the subject annoys you, we will talk of it some other time.”
“After you have heard the doctor’s report,” sneered Bonelle.
The mercer gave him a stealthy glance, which the old man’s keen look immediately detected. Neither could repress a smile; these good souls understood one another perfectly, and Ramin saw that this was not the Excellent Opportunity he desired, and departed.
The next day Ramin sent a neighboring medicalman, and heard it was his opinion that if Bonelle held on for three months longer, it would be a miracle. Delightful news!
Several days elapsed, and although very anxious, Ramin assumed a careless air, and did not call upon his landlord, or take any notice of him. At the end of the week old Marguerite entered the shop to make a trifling purchase.
“And how are we getting on up-stairs?” negligently asked Monsieur Ramin.
“Worse and worse, my good Sir,” she sighed. “We have rheumatic pains, which make us often use expressions the reverse of Christian-like, and yet nothing can induce us to see either the lawyer or the priest; the gout is getting nearer to our stomach every day, and still we go on talking about the strength of our constitution. Oh, Sir, if you have any influence with us, do, pray do, tell us how wicked it is to die without making one’s will or confessing one’s sins.”
“I shall go up this very evening,” ambiguously replied Monsieur Ramin.
He kept his promise, and found Monsieur Bonelle in bed, groaning with pain, and in the worst of tempers.
“What poisoning doctor did you send?” he asked, with an ireful glance; “I want no doctor, I am not ill; I will not follow his prescription; he forbade me to eat; Iwilleat.”
“He is a very clever man,” said the visitor. “He told me that never in the whole course of his experience has he met with what he called so much ‘resisting power’ as exists in your frame. He asked me if you were not of a long-lived race.”
“That is as people may judge,” replied Monsieur Bonelle. “All I can say is, that my grandfather died at ninety, and my father at eighty-six.”
“The doctor owned that you had a wonderfully strong constitution.”
“Who said I hadn’t?” exclaimed the invalid feebly.
“You may rely on it, you would preserve your health better if you had not the trouble of these vexatious lodgers. Have you thought about the life annuity?” said Ramin as carelessly as he could, considering how near the matter was to his hopes and wishes.
“Why, I have scruples,” returned Bonelle, coughing. “I do not wish to take you in. My longevity would be the ruin of you.”
“To meet that difficulty,” quickly replied the mercer, “we can reduce the interest.”
“But I must have high interest,” placidly returned Monsieur Bonelle.
Ramin, on hearing this, burst into a loud fit of laughter, called Monsieur Bonelle a sly old fox, gave him a poke in the ribs, which made the old man cough for five minutes, and then proposed that they should talk it over some other day. The mercer left Monsieur Bonelle in the act of protesting that he felt as strong as a man of forty.
Monsieur Ramin felt in no hurry to conclude the proposed agreement. “The later one begins to pay, the better,” he said, as he descended the stairs.
Days passed on, and the negotiation made no way. It struck the observant tradesman that all was not right. Old Marguerite several times refused to admit him, declaring her master was asleep; there was something mysterious and forbidding in her manner that seemed to Monsieur Ramin very ominous. At length a sudden thought occurred to him; the housekeeper—wishing to become her master’s heir—had heard his scheme and opposed it. On the very day that he arrived atthis conclusion, he met a lawyer, with whom he had formerly had some transactions, coming down the staircase. The sight sent a chill through the mercer’s commercial heart, and a presentiment—one of those presentiments that seldom deceive—told him it was too late. He had, however, the fortitude to abstain from visiting Monsieur Bonelle until evening came; when he went up, resolved to see him in spite of all Marguerite might urge. The door was half-open, and the old housekeeper stood talking on the landing to a middle-aged man in a dark cassock.
“It is all over! The old witch has got the priests at him,” thought Ramin, inwardly groaning at his own folly in allowing himself to be forestalled.
“You cannot see Monsieur to-night,” sharply said Marguerite, as he attempted to pass her.
“Alas! is my excellent friend so very ill?” asked Ramin, in a mournful tone.
“Sir,” eagerly said the clergyman, catching him by the button of his coat, “if you are indeed the friend of that unhappy man, do seek to bring him into a more suitable frame of mind. I have seen many dying men, but never so much obstinacy,never such infatuated belief in the duration of life.”
“Then you think he reallyisdying?” asked Ramin; and, in spite of the melancholy accent he endeavored to assume, there was something so peculiar in his tone, that the priest looked at him very fixedly as he slowly replied,
“Yes, Sir, I think he is.”
“Ah!” was all Monsieur Ramin said; and as the clergyman had now relaxed his hold of the button, Ramin passed in spite of the remonstrances of Marguerite, who rushed after the priest. He found Monsieur Bonelle still in bed in a towering rage.
“Oh! Ramin, my friend,” he groaned, “never take a housekeeper, and never let her know you have any property. They are harpies, Ramin,—harpies! such a day as I have had; first, the lawyer, who comes to write down ‘my last testamentary dispositions,’ as he calls them; then the priest, who gently hints that I am a dying man. Oh, what a day!”
“Anddidyou make your will, my excellent friend?” softly asked Monsieur Ramin, with a keen look.
“Make my will?” indignantly exclaimed the old man; “make my will? what do you mean, Sir? do you mean to say I am dying?”
“Heaven forbid!” piously ejaculated Ramin.
“Then why do you ask me if I have been making my will?” angrily resumed the old man. He then began to be extremely abusive.
When money was in the way, Monsieur Ramin, though otherwise of a violent temper, had the meekness of a lamb. He bore the treatment of his host with the meekest patience, and having first locked the door so as to make sure that Marguerite would not interrupt them, he watched Monsieur Bonelle attentively, and satisfied himself that the Excellent Opportunity he had been ardently longing for had arrived. “He is going fast,” he thought; “and unless I settle the agreement to-night, and get it drawn up and signed to-morrow, it will be too late.”
“My dear friend,” he at length said aloud, on perceiving that the old gentleman had fairly exhausted himself and was lying panting on his back, “you are indeed a lamentable instance of the lengths to which the greedy lust of lucre will carry our poor human nature. It is really distressingto see Marguerite, a faithful, attached servant, suddenly converted into a tormenting harpy by the prospect of a legacy! Lawyers and priests flock around you like birds of prey, drawn hither by the scent of gold! Oh, the miseries of having delicate health combined with a sound constitution and large property!”
“Ramin,” groaned the old man, looking inquiringly into his visitor’s face, “you are again going to talk to me about that annuity—I know you are!”
“My excellent friend, it is merely to deliver you from a painful position.”
“I am sure, Ramin, you think in your soul I am dying,” whimpered Monsieur Bonelle.
“Absurd, my dear Sir. Dying? I will prove to you that you have never been in better health. In the first place you feel no pain.”
“Excepting from rheumatism,” groaned Monsieur Bonelle.
“Rheumatism! who ever died of rheumatism? and if that be all—”
“No, it is not all,” interrupted the old man with great irritability; “what would you say to the gout getting higher and higher up every day?”
“The gout is rather disagreeable, but if there is nothing else—”
“Yes, there is something else,” sharply said Monsieur Bonelle. “There is an asthma that will scarcely let me breathe, and a racking pain in my head that does not allow me a moment’s ease. But if you think I am dying, Ramin, you are quite mistaken.”
“No doubt, my dear friend, no doubt; but in the meanwhile, suppose we talk of this annuity. Shall we say one thousand francs a year.”
“What?” asked Bonelle, looking at him very fixedly.
“My dear friend, I mistook; I meant two thousand francs per annum,” hurriedly rejoined Ramin.
Monsieur Bonelle closed his eyes, and appeared to fall into a gentle slumber. The mercer coughed; the sick man never moved.
“Monsieur Bonelle.”
No reply.
“My excellent friend.”
Utter silence.
“Are you asleep?”
A long pause.
“Well, then, what do you say to three thousand?”
Monsieur Bonelle opened his eyes.
“Ramin,” said he, sententiously, “you are a fool; the house brings me in four thousand as it is.”
This was quite false, and the mercer knew it; but he had his own reasons for wishing to seem to believe it true.
“Good Heavens!” said he, with an air of great innocence, “who could have thought it, and the lodgers constantly running away. Four thousand? Well, then, you shall have four thousand.”
Monsieur Bonelle shut his eyes once more, and murmured “The mere rental—nonsense!” He then folded his hands on his breast, and appeared to compose himself to sleep.
“Oh, what a sharp man of business he is!” Ramin said, admiringly; but for once omnipotent flattery failed in its effect; “So acute!” continued he, with a stealthy glance at the old man, who remained perfectly unmoved. “I see you will insist upon making it the other five hundred francs.”
Monsieur Ramin said this as if five thousand five hundred francs had already been mentioned, and was the very summit of Monsieur Bonelle’s ambition. But the ruse failed in its effect; the sick man never so much as stirred.
“But, my dear friend,” urged Monsieur Ramin in a tone of feeling remonstrance, “there is such a thing as being too sharp, too acute. How can you expect that I shall give you more when your constitution is so good, and you are to be such a long liver?”
“Yes, but I may be carried off one of those days,” quietly observed the old man, evidently wishing to turn the chance of his own death to account.
“Indeed, and I hope so,” muttered the mercer, who was getting very ill-tempered.
“You see,” soothingly continued Bonelle, “you are so good a man of business, Ramin, that you will double the actual value of the house in no time. I am a quiet, easy person, indifferent to money; otherwise this house would now bring me in eight thousand at the very least.”
“Eight thousand!” indignantly exclaimed the mercer. “Monsieur Bonelle, you have no conscience. Come now, my dear friend, do be reasonable. Six thousand francs a-year (I don’t mind saying six) is really a very handsome income for a man of your quiet habits. Come, be reasonable.” But Monsieur Bonelle turned a deaf ear to reason, and closed his eyes once more. What betweenopening and shutting them for the next quarter of an hour, he at length induced Monsieur Ramin to offer him seven thousand francs.
“Very well, Ramin, agreed,” he quietly said; “you have made an unconscionable bargain.” To this succeeded a violent fit of coughing.
As Ramin unlocked the door to leave, he found old Marguerite, who had been listening all the time, ready to assail him with a torrent of whispered abuse for duping her “poor dear innocent old master into such a bargain.” The mercer bore it all very patiently; he could make allowances for her excited feelings, and only rubbed his hands and bade her a jovial good evening.
The agreement was signed on the following day, to the indignation of old Marguerite, and the mutual satisfaction of the parties concerned.
Every one admired the luck and shrewdness of Ramin, for the old man every day was reported worse; and it was clear to all that the first quarter of the annuity would never be paid. Marguerite, in her wrath, told the story as a grievance to every one; people listened, shook their heads, and pronounced Monsieur Ramin to be a deuced clever fellow.
A month elapsed. As Ramin was coming down one morning from the attics, where he had been giving notice to a poor widow who had failed in paying her rent, he heard a light step on the stairs. Presently a sprightly gentleman, in buoyant health and spirits, wearing the form of Monsieur Bonelle, appeared. Ramin stood aghast.
“Well, Ramin,” gaily said the old man, “how are you getting on? Have you been tormenting the poor widow up stairs? Why, man, we must live and let live!”
“Monsieur Bonelle,” said the mercer, in a hollow tone, “may I ask where are your rheumatics?”
“Gone, my dear friend,—gone.”
“And the gout that was creeping higher and higher every day,” exclaimed Monsieur Ramin, in a voice of anguish.
“It went lower and lower, till it disappeared altogether,” composedly replied Bonelle.
“And your asthma——”
“The asthma remains, but asthmatic people are proverbially long-lived. It is, I have been told, the only complaint that Methuselah was troubled with.” With this, Bonelle opened his door, shut it, and disappeared.
Ramin was transfixed on the stairs; petrified with intense disappointment, and a powerful sense of having been duped. When discovered, he stared vacantly, and raved about an Excellent Opportunity of taking his revenge.
The wonderful cure was the talk of the neighborhood, whenever Monsieur Bonelle appeared in the streets, jauntily flourishing his cane. In the first frenzy of his despair, Ramin refused to pay; he accused every one of having been in a plot to deceive him; he turned off Catherine and expelled his porter; he publicly accused the lawyer and priest of conspiracy; brought an action against the doctor, and lost it. He had another brought against him for violently assaulting Marguerite, in which he was cast in heavy damages. Monsieur Bonelle did not trouble himself with useless remonstrances, but, when his annuity was refused, employed such good legal arguments as the exasperated mercer could not possibly resist.
Ten years have elapsed, and MM. Ramin and Bonelle still live on. For a house which would have been dear at fifty thousand francs, the draper has already handed over seventy thousand.
The once red-faced, jovial Ramin, is now a pale,haggard man, of sour temper and aspect. To add to his anguish, he sees the old man thrive on that money which it breaks his heart to give. Old Marguerite takes a malicious pleasure in giving him an exact account of their good cheer, and in asking him if he does not think Monsieur looks better and better every day. Of one part of this torment Ramin might get rid, by giving his old master notice to quit, and no longer having him in his house. But this he cannot do; he has a secret fear that Bonelle would take some Excellent Opportunity of dying without his knowledge, and giving some other person an Excellent Opportunity of personating him, and receiving the money in his stead.
The last accounts of the victim of Excellent Opportunities represent him as being gradually worn down with disappointment. There seems every probability of his being the first to leave the world; for Bonelle is heartier than ever.
THE END.
Popular Work! Twelfth Thousand Now Ready!———LEWIE, OR THE BENDED TWIG.BY COUSIN CICELY,Author of “Silver Lake Stories,” etc., etc.One Volume 12mo.,Price $1.00.
ALDEN, BEARDSLEY & CO.,Auburn, N. Y., }WANZER, BEARDSLEY & CO.,Rochester, N. Y., }Publishers.
“Mother! thy gentle hand hath mighty power,For thou alone may’st train, and guide, and mouldPlants that shall blossom, with an odor sweet,Or, like the cursed fig-tree, wither, and becomeVile cumberers of the ground.”
“Mother! thy gentle hand hath mighty power,For thou alone may’st train, and guide, and mouldPlants that shall blossom, with an odor sweet,Or, like the cursed fig-tree, wither, and becomeVile cumberers of the ground.”
“Mother! thy gentle hand hath mighty power,For thou alone may’st train, and guide, and mouldPlants that shall blossom, with an odor sweet,Or, like the cursed fig-tree, wither, and becomeVile cumberers of the ground.”
Brief Extracts from Notices of the Press.
* * * A tale which deserves to rank with “The Wide, Wide World.” It is written with graphic power, and full of interest.—Hartford Repub.
* * * Her writings are equal to the best. She is a second Fanny Fern.—Palmyra Democrat.
* * * It is recommended by its excellent moral tone and its wholesome practical inculcations.—N. Y. Tribune.
* * * Full of grace and charm, its style and vivacity make it a most amusing work. For the intellectual and thinking, it has a deeper lesson, and while it thrills the heart, bids parents beware of that weakness which prepares in infancy the misery of man. “Lewie” is one of the most popular books now before the public, and needs no puffing, as it is selling by thousands.—N. Y. Day Book.
* * * The moral of the book is inestimable. The writer cannot fail to be good, as she so faithfully portrays the evils which owe their origin to the criminal neglect of proper parental discipline.—Hunt’s Merchants’ Magazine.
* * * The plot is full of dramatic interest, yet entirely free from extravagance; the incidents grow out of the main plot easily and naturally, while the sentiment is healthy and unaffected. Commend us to more writers like Cousin Cicely—books which we can see in the hands of our young people without uneasiness. Books which interest by picturing life as it is, instead of giving us galvanized society.—National Democrat.
* * * A touching and impressive story, unaffected in style and effective in plot.—N. Y. Evangelist.
* * * The story of the Governess, contained in this volume, is one of rare interest.—Highland Eagle.
* * * The story is a charming one—the most affecting we ever read.—Jersey Shore Republican.
* * * “Cousin Cicely” is just the person to portray family scenes.
* * * This story will be profitable reading.—Daily Capital City Fact, Columbus, Ohio.
* * * The contents of the work are of the first order, and unexceptionable.—Hartford Daily Times.