International Weekly Miscellany — Volume 1, No. 3, July 15, 1850 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 117 pages of information about International Weekly Miscellany — Volume 1, No. 3, July 15, 1850.

International Weekly Miscellany — Volume 1, No. 3, July 15, 1850 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 117 pages of information about International Weekly Miscellany — Volume 1, No. 3, July 15, 1850.
fortune to be seated next to him, as it once happened to me at Madame du Roure’s.  While singing the praises of his beautiful villa at Monte-Fiascone, he frequently drew from his pocket an enormous snuff-box, the contents of which were most liberally showered down upon the company placed near him, and, between two pinches, he informed us that he had formerly the pretension of taking the very best snuff in France.  He prepared it with his own hands, and spared no pains in the important proceeding.  When he emigrated to Rome he carried with him two jars of the precious mixture.  The future destiny of the Abbe Maury was dependent on the pope, and he was a great snuff-taker!  “I presented myself several times (I quote his own expressions) before his holiness, and took great care never to omit displaying my snuff-box, which I opened and shut several times during the interview, making as loud a noise as possible.  This was all I dared do,—­respect forbade me making any advances toward his holiness by offering directly a taste of the mixture of which I was so justly proud.  At length my perseverance met with its reward.  One day I managed skillfully to push the snuff-box beneath his hand, and, in the heat of argument, he opened it mechanically, and took a pinch of snuff therefrom.  It was an awful moment, as you may imagine.  I observed him with the greatest attention, and immediately remarked the expression of satisfaction and surprise which overspread his features as he stretched forth his fingers to take another pinch. “Donde vi viene questo maraviglioso tobacco?” I told him that I alone possessed the mixture, and that I had only two jars left, or rather that I had no more, as, of course, they now belonged to his holiness.  I am inclined to believe that this present was agreeable to him, as it was useful to me.”  After the story the cardinal boasted to us of the extraordinary frankness of his character.  He had shown more of this than he had intended in the tale he had been telling.

—­Souvenirs de France et d’Italie dans les Annees 1830, 1831 et 1832.

* * * * *

The Deutsche Reform publishes as a curiosity a selection, though an imperfect one, from the catalogue of the flying leaves and small cheap journals, political and satirical, that sprung into existence after the revolution, mostly in Berlin and Vienna; not more than three or four of them now exist.  The insect world was a favorite source of names for the satirist, the sting of whose production was frequently only in the title:  every week produced the Hornet, the Wasp, the Gadfly, and their plurals, the Wasps and the Gadflies; there was also an Imperial Gadfly, and one Wasp’s Nest.  The necessity of enlightenment exhausted the means of doing it through the Torch, the Taper, the Jet of Gas, the Lamp, the Everburning Lamp (the last flickers still

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International Weekly Miscellany — Volume 1, No. 3, July 15, 1850 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.