“Adieu, thou old carcase!” I said to myself; “adieu, thou walking marriage!  Adieu, thou stick of a burnt-out fire-work!  Adieu, thou machine!  Although I have given thee from time to time some glimpses of people dear to me, old family portraits,—­back with you to the picture dealer’s shop, to Madame de T-----, and all the rest of them; take your place round the bier with undertaker’s mutes, for all I care!”

MEDITATION XXX.

CONCLUSION.

A recluse, who was credited with the gift of second sight, having commanded the children of Israel to follow him to a mountain top in order to hear the revelation of certain mysteries, saw that he was accompanied by a crowd which took up so much room on the road that, prophet as he was, his amour-propre was vastly tickled.

But as the mountain was a considerable distance off, it happened that at the first halt, an artisan remembered that he had to deliver a new pair of slippers to a duke and peer, a publican fell to thinking how he had some specie to negotiate, and off they went.

A little further on two lovers lingered under the olive trees and forgot the discourse of the prophet; for they thought that the promised land was the spot where they stood, and the divine word was heard when they talked to one another.

The fat people, loaded with punches a la Sancho, had been wiping their foreheads with their handkerchiefs, for the last quarter of an hour, and began to grow thirsty, and therefore halted beside a clear spring.

Certain retired soldiers complained of the corns which tortured them, and spoke of Austerlitz, and of their tight boots.

At the second halt, certain men of the world whispered together: 

“But this prophet is a fool.”

“Have you ever heard him?”

“I?  I came from sheer curiosity.”

“And I because I saw the fellow had a large following.” (The last man who spoke was a fashionable.)

“He is a mere charlatan.”

The prophet kept marching on.  But when he reached the plateau, from which a wide horizon spread before him, he turned back, and saw no one but a poor Israelite, to whom he might have said as the Prince de Ligne to the wretched little bandy-legged drummer boy, whom he found on the spot where he expected to see a whole garrison awaiting him:  “Well, my readers, it seems that you have dwindled down to one.”

Thou man of God who has followed me so far—­I hope that a short recapitulation will not terrify thee, and I have traveled on under the impression that thou, like me, hast kept saying to thyself, “Where the deuce are we going?”

Well, well, this is the place and the time to ask you, respected reader, what your opinion is with regard to the renewal of the tobacco monopoly, and what you think of the exorbitant taxes on wines, on the right to carry firearms, on gaming, on lotteries, on playing cards, on brandy, on soap, cotton, silks, etc.