Haselnoss issued a pamphlet demonstrating that all these bones were derived from an antediluvian world:  that they were fossil bones, accumulated there in a sort of funnel during the universal flood—­that is to say, four thousand years before Christ, and that, consequently, one might consider them as nothing but stones, and that it was needless to be disgusted.  But his work had scarcely reassured the gouty when, one fine morning, the corpse of a fox, then that of a hawk with all its feathers, fell from the cascade.

It was impossible to establish that these remains antedated the Flood.  Anyway, the disgust was so great that everybody tied up his bundle and went to take the waters elsewhere.

“How infamous!” cried the beautiful ladies—­“how horrible!  So that’s what the virtue of these mineral waters came from!  Oh, ’twere better to die of gravel than continue such a remedy!”

At the end of a week there remained at Spinbronn only a big Englishman who had gout in his hands as well as in his feet, who had himself addressed as Sir Thomas Hawerburch, Commodore; and he brought a large retinue, according to the usage of a British subject in a foreign land.

This personage, big and fat, with a florid complexion, but with hands simply knotted with gout, would have drunk skeleton soup if it would have cured his infirmity.  He laughed heartily over the desertion of the other sufferers, and installed himself in the prettiest chalet at half price, announcing his design to pass the winter at Spinbronn.

* * * * *

(Here lawyer Bremer slowly absorbed an ample pinch of snuff as if to quicken his reminiscences; he shook his laced ruff with his finger tips and continued:)

* * * * *

Five or six years before the Revolution of 1789, a young doctor of Pirmesens, named Christian Weber, had gone out to San Domingo in the hope of making his fortune.  He had actually amassed some hundred thousand francs m the exercise of his profession when the negro revolt broke out.

I need not recall to you the barbarous treatment to which our unfortunate fellow countrymen were subjected at Haiti.  Dr. Weber had the good luck to escape the massacre and to save part of his fortune.  Then he traveled in South America, and especially in French Guiana.  In 1801 he returned to Pirmesens, and established himself at Spinbronn, where Dr. Haselnoss made over his house and defunct practice.

Christian Weber brought with him an old negress called Agatha:  a frightful creature, with a flat nose and lips as large as your fist, and her head tied up in three bandanas of razor-edged colors.  This poor old woman adored red; she had earrings which hung down to her shoulders, and the mountaineers of Hundsrueck came from six leagues around to stare at her.