The Wandering Jew — Volume 05 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 142 pages of information about The Wandering Jew — Volume 05.

The Wandering Jew — Volume 05 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 142 pages of information about The Wandering Jew — Volume 05.
and put out to use for one hundred and fifty years, at the expiration of which time they are to be divided between the then existing descendants of the said Rennepont; and it is calculated that this sum, increased by so many accumulations, will by then have become enormous, and will amount to at least forty or fifty millions of livres tournois.  From motives which are not known, but which are duly stated in a testamentary document, the said Rennepont has concealed from his family, whom the edicts against the Protestants have driven out of France, the investment of these fifty thousand crowns; and has only desired his relations to preserve in their line from generation to generation, the charge to the last survivors, to meet in Paris, Rue Saint-Francois, a hundred and fifty years hence, on February the 13th, 1832.  And that this charge might not be forgotten, he employed a person, whose description is known, but not his real occupation, to cause to be manufactured sundry bronze medals, on which the request and date are engraved, and to deliver one to each member of the family—­a measure the more necessary, as, from some other motive equally unknown, but probably explained in the testament, the heirs are to present themselves on the day in question, before noon, in person, and not by any attorney, or representative, or to forfeit all claim to the inheritance.  The stranger who undertook to distribute the medals to the different members of the family of Rennepont is a man of thirty to thirty-six years of age, of tall stature, and with a proud and sad expression of countenance.  He has black eyebrows, very thick, and singularly joined together.  He is known as Joseph, and is much suspected of being an active and dangerous emissary of the wretched republicans and heretics of the Seven United Provinces.  It results from these premises, that this sum, surreptitiously confided by a relapsed heretic to unknown hands, has escaped the confiscation decreed in our favor by our well-beloved king.  A serious fraud and injury has therefore been committed, and we are bound to take every means to recover this our right, if not immediately, at least in some future time.  Our Society being (for the greater glory of God and our Holy Father) imperishable, it will be easy, thanks to the connections we keep up with all parts of the world, by means of missions and other establishments, to follow the line of this family of Rennepont from generation to generation, without ever losing sight of it—­so that a hundred and fifty years hence, at the moment of the division of this immense accumulation of property, our Company may claim the inheritance of which it has been so treacherously deprived, and recover it by any means in its power, fas aut nefas, even by craft or violence—­our Company not being bound to act tenderly with the future detainers of our goods, of which we have been maliciously deprived by an infamous and sacrilegious heretic—­and because it is right to defend, preserve, and recover
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The Wandering Jew — Volume 05 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.